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The  Concentration  of  l^ealth 


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CONCENTRATION 
2^  WEALTH 


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FROM  THE  y^ 

J.  H.  RYCK  Or-Ll 

THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  WEALTH  ' 


A  Half  Century  of  Wealth  Concentration 

The  Growing  Poverty  of  Industrial  Society 

A  Reign  of  Corruption  and  Plunder    .... 

Industrial  Society  Sold  Into  Bondage     .  .  . 

The  Modern  Corporation  a  Monstrosity   .  . 

The  Corporation  Should  be  Social,  Co-operative    Page  35 

Nature  and  Justice  of  the  Required  Remedy  .  Page  41 


Page  1 
Page  8 
Page  15 
Page  22 
Page  27 


A  HALF  CENTURY  OF  WEALTH  CONCENTRATION 

It  would  be  difficult  to  overestimate  the  material  benefits 
received  from  Science  and  invention,  during  the  last  half  or  three- 
quarters  of  a  century. 

In  transportation,  from  the  ox  or  horse  team,  overland  wagon 
train,  or  slow  sailing  vessel,  to  the  modern  steam  engines,  electric 
trains,  automobiles,  and  ocean  grey -hounds;  in  agriculture, 
from  the  hoe,  single  shovel  plow,  hand-sickle,  or  flail,  to  steam 
plows,  harvesters,  and  threshers;  in  printing,  from  hand  type  and 
presses,  to  the  linotype  and  perfecting  presses;  in  manufacture, 
from  the  common  needle,  spinning  wheel,  or  hand  loom,  to  the 
sewing  machines,  power  looms,  and  all  the  other  complex  and 
powerful  machinery  now  in  use; —  represent  a  transformation  in 
the  world's  work  and  work-shop,  almost  beyond  the  power  of  the 
imagination  to  picture. 

These  changes  mark  a  transition  from  almost  primitive 
methods,  to  those  of  the  highest  degree  of  complexity;  and  the 
multiplication  of  man's  labor  power  ten,  and  often  a  hundred, 
and  even  a  thousand,  fold. 

Along  with  this  increase  in  labor  power,  has  gone  also  a  vast 
increase  in  wealth  production.  The  present  wealth  of  the  United 
States,  if  equally  divided,  would  give  1 1,31 8  to  every  individual 
in  the  land,  including  babes, — or  about  15,000  to  every  family; 
as  against  $307  per  capita,  or  |i,200  per  family,  in  1850.* 

Thus  the  wealth  we  have  saved  is  four  times  greater  to-day 
than  a  half-century  ago.  And  this,  be  it  remembered,  is  over  and 
above  the  increased  cost  of  living  from  the  lavish  maintenance  of  an 
ever  growing  idle  class;  over  and  above  the  wealth  sent  to  foreign 
lands  in  the  purchase  of  estates,  palaces,  titles,  and  pleasures; 
over  and  above  the  billions  destroyed  in  our  great  civil  war; 
and,  moreover,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that,  under  our  present 
industrial  system,  a  very  large  percentage  of  all  our  labor  power 
is  of  the  class  properly  termed  nonproductive.     But  for  the  waste 

*U.  S.  Census,  1900  and  1850. 

i 03156G 


2  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

in  these  and  other  respects,  in  both  our  social  and  economic  sys- 
tems, the  above  total  would,  perhaps,  be  not  less  than  twice  the 
sum  given, — or  $10,000  for  every  family  in  the  land. 

As  to  our  wealth  creation,  then,  as  also  the  means  by  which  it 
has  been  accomplished,  there  can  be  little  question;  and  if  the 
subject  of  wealth  can  have  any  especial  interest  or  concern,  either 
for  the  scientist  or  the  citizen,  it  must  relate  to  that  other  prob- 
lem of  its  distribution. 

I  propose,  therefore,  in  the  following  pages  to  inquire  into, 
first, — The  degree  of  wealth  concentration  in  the  United  States; 
secondly, — the  effect  of  this  wealth  concentration  upon  the  body 
of  industrial  society;  thirdly, — the  process  by  which  it  has  been 
brought  about;  fourthly, — the  causes  leading  thereto;  fifthly, — 
the  economic  doctrines  responsible  therefor;  sixthly, ^the  logical 
and  necessary  remedy  for  these  conditions;  and  seventhly, — the 
nature  and  justice  of  the  remedy  required. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  I  shall  endeavor  to  contrast  the 
conditions  fifty  years  ago  with  those  of  to-day,  in  respect  to 
wealth  concentration. 

In  1854  there  was  published  in  the  city  of  New  York,  a  little 
volume* entitled  "The  Wealth  and  Biography  of  the  Wealthy 
Citizens  of  the  City  of  New  York."  Some  fifteen  years  before, 
the  leading  merchants  of  the  city  had  met  together,  and  made 
calculations  as  to  the  wealth  at  the  command  of  each,  in  "backing 
up"  their  business  enterprises.  As  the  list  grew,  and  copies  were 
in  demand,  a  regular  publication  was  agreed  upon;  and  this  was 
entrusted  to  Moses  Yale  Beach,  Esq.,  the  publisher  of  the  New 
York  Sun. 

The  book  was  then  in  its  thirteenth  annual  edition;  and  in 
his  preface  the  publisher  says: — "The  present  edition  is  a  careful 
revision  of  all  previous  ones,  the  largest  .portion  of  the  contents 
having  been  entirely  rewritten.  Neither  labor  nor  pains  has  been 
spared  to  make  it  absolutely  correct,  and  it  is  hoped  not  without 
success."  Both  from  the  character  of  the  publisher,  and  from 
the  fact  that  the  volume  was  the  work  of  the  business  men 
themselves,  we  may  safely  assume  that  its  contents  are  reliable. 

From  it  we  learn  that  in  the  year  1854  there  were  just 
twenty-five  millionaires  in  the  metropolis,  with  fortunes  ranging 
from  $1,000,000  to  |6,ooo,ooo  each.  The  combined  fortunes  of 
the  twenty-five  aggregated,  in  fact,  but  143,000,000. 

Inasmuch  as  New  York  City  was  then,  as  now,  much  the  most 
important  financial  center  in  the  country,  and  as  Philadelphia 
and  Boston  were  the  only  other  cities  approaching  it  in  size  or 
importance,  while  Chicago  and  other  cities  of  the  central  west 
were  little  more  than  villages,  we  may  fairly  assume  that  this  list 

*  "  Wealth  and  Biography  of  the  Wealthy  Citizens  of  the  City  of  New 
York,"  By  Moses  Yale  Beach,  1S54 


A     HALF    CENTURY    OF    WEALTH    CONCENTRATION    3 

represented  at  least  one-half  of  the  entire  number  of  millionaires 
then  in  the  United  States.  In  fact,  a  similar  list  published  in 
Philadelphia  nine  years  previously,*  gave  the  entire  number  of 
Philadelphia  millionaires  as  nine,  with  a  probable  aggregate  of 
not  to  exceed  $15,000,000  as  the  combined  fortunes  of  the  entire 
number. 

Allowing,  then,  for  the  increase  in  the  number  of  Philadel- 
phia millionaires  during  the  nine  years,  and  allowing  a  propor- 
tionate number  for  Boston  and  other  places,  it  would  yet  be 
safe  to  say  that  in  the  year  1854  there  were  not  to  exceed  fifty 
milhonaires  in  the  whole  of  the  United  States,  and  that  the  com- 
bined fortunes  of  the  entire  fifty  did  not  exceed  $80,000,000.  If 
to  these  we  add  the  fortunes  of  the  half-millionaires,  it  would 
probably  increase  the  aggregate  or  total  wealth  of  all  the  really 
rich  men  then  in  the  country  to  about  §100,000,000. 

The  census  of  1850  gave  the  total  wealth  of  the  United  States 
as  slightly  over  $7,000,000,000;  and  the  census  of  i860  gave  it 
as  slightly  over  $16,000,000,000.  Assuming  that  one-third  of 
the  increase  of  $9,000,000,000  was  made  during  the  first  four  years 
of  the  decade,  and  adding  this  to  the  census  of  1850,  would  give 
the  total  wealth  of  the  nation,  in  1854,  as  $10,000,000,000. 
Now,  if  the  total  wealth  of  the  millionaires  and  half-millionaires 
at  that  date  was,  as  shov/n  by  the  above  figures,  $100,000,000, 
this  gave  to  the  rich  men  of  the  country,  in  1854,  just  one-hun- 
dredth part,  or  one  per  cent.,  of  the  total  aggregate  wealth  of 
the  United  States. 

The  late  Senator  Ingalls,  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the  United 
States  Senate  January  14,  1891,  said  :f  "A  table  has  been  compiled 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  how  wealth  in  this  country  is  dis- 
tributed, and  it  is  full  of  the  most  startling  admonition.  It  has 
appeared  in  the  magazines;  it  has  been  commented  upon  in  this 
chamber;  it  has  been  the  theme  of  editorial  discussion.  It 
appears  from  this  compilation  that  there  are,  in  the  United  States, 
two  hundred  persons  who  have  an  average  of  more  than  $20,000,- 
000  each;  four  hundred  persons  possessing  $10,000,000  each; 
one  thousand  persons  possessing  $5,000,000  each;  two  thou- 
sand persons  possessing  $2,500,000  each;  six  thousand  persons 
possessing  $1,000,000  each;  and  fifteen  thousand  persons  $500,- 
000  each;  making  a  total  of  31,100  persons  who  possess  an  aggre- 
gate of  $36,250,000,000." 

In  1890,  at  the  time  the  table  mentioned  by  Senator  Ingalls 
was  compiled,  the  census  gave  the  total  wealth  of  the  United 
States  as  slightly  more  than  $65,000,000,000.  Again,  if  at  that 
time  the  millionaires  and  half-millionaires  of  the  country  owned, 

♦"Wealth  and  Biography  of  the  Wealthy  Citizens  of  Philadelphia,"  by 
a  Member  of  the  Philadelphia  Bar,  1845. 

t  "  Writings  and  Speeches  of  John  J.  Ingalls,"  Page  320. 


4  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

as  stated  by  Senator  Ingalls,  the  enormous  total  of  136,250,000,- 
000,  this  gave  them  just  fifty-six  per  cent,  of  the  entire  aggregate 
wealth  of  the  United  States;  or,  in  other  words,  just  fifty-six 
times  as  much  of  the  nation's  wealth,  greatly  as  this  had  grown, 
as  their  humble  predecessors  the  millionaires  of  thirty-six  years 
before  possessed. 

Equally  startling  is  the  growth  of  the  individual  fortunes  of 
these  men  of  millions. 

A  writer  in  the  Forum*  placed  the  wealth  of  J.  J.  Astor,  in 
1889,  at  1150,000,000;  Wm.  Astor  at  $50,000,000;  and  W.  W. 
Astor  at  $50,000,000.  This  would  give  the  wealth  of  these 
three  branches  of  the  House  of  Astor  as  $250,000,000.  If  to 
this  we  add  the  portions  of  the  estate  which  had  at  various 
times  gone  to  the  daughters  of  the  family,  it  would  probably 
increase  the  combined  wealth  of  the  Astors,  in  1889,  to  $300,- 
000,000;  or  just  fifty  times  the  wealth  of  the  family  in  1854. 
Similarily  the  wealth  of  the  Vanderbilt  family  had  grown,  within 
the  same  period  from  $1,500,000  to  $300,000,000;  or  just  two 
hundred  times  the  wealth  of  the  great  Cornelius  in  1854.  The  in- 
crease in  the  fortunes  of  the  Goelets,  the  Havemeyers,  and  others, 
show  about  the  same  proportions;  while  A.  Belmont,  who  in  1854 
possessed  a  paltry  $100,000,  is  credited  in  1889  with  a  fortune  of 
$30,000,000;  or  a  multiplication  of  just  three  hundred  times. 

Now,  if  to  these  we  add  the  mushroom  fortunes  of  John  D. 
Rockefeller  (in  1889)  of  $100,000,000,  of  Jay  Gould  $70,000,- 
000,  of  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  and  J.  S.  Morgan  $25,000,000  each, 
and  the  host  of  others,  almost  equally  as  great,  who  were  unheard 
of  a  half  century  ago,  we  can  readily  see  how  the  wealth  of  our 
millionaires,  as  a  class,  had  grown  to  fifty-six  times  as  great  a 
proportion  of  the  nation's  wealth  in  1890,  as  thirty-six  years 
Defore,  in  1854. 

These  estimates,  it  will  be  observed,  were  made  seventeen 
years  ago;  and  even  at  the  ordinary  rates  of  interest  the  $36,- 
250,000,000,  supposed  to  have  been  possessed  by  the  31,100  per- 
sons in  1890,  would  have  grown  to  much  more  than  double  that 
amount  by  the  beginning  of  1907. 

But  we  have  added  many  more  names  to  the  possessors  of 
great  wealth ;  and  the  growth  of  these  enormous  fortunes  is  not 
limited  by  any  ordinary  interest   rate. 

Railway  construction,  to  which  very  many  of  these  great 
fortunes  were  due,  has  continued  unabated;  while  the  develop- 
ment of  our  street  railways,  gas  and  electric  lighting,  telephone 
systems,  and  the  like,  had  only  begun  seventeen  years  ago.  The 
vast  growth  of  our  cities  with  their  added  land  values,  and  the 
development  of  our  oil,  coal,  iron,  gold,  copper,  and  other  mineral 
resources,  have  continued  to  pile  up  these  great  fortunes  more 

*Thomas  G.  Shearman.    Forum,  November,  1889. 


A     HALF    CENTURY    OF    WEALTH    CONCENTRATION    5 

rapidly  than  ever  before.  The  reorganization  of  our  railroads — 
almost  universally  foreclosed  during  the  decade  of  1900 — as  also 
their  constant  recapitalization,  have,  even  more  than  their  origi- 
nal construction,  afforded  again  the  greatest  opportunities  for 
rapid  fortune  building.  And  especially  trust  formation,  perhaps 
more  than  any  other  invention  devised  by  man,  has  been  calcu- 
lated to  take  wealth  from  the  people  at  large,  and  add  this  to 
the  great  fortunes  of  the  world. 

It  is  popularly  supposed,  it  is  true,  that  the  proportion  of  our 
national  wealth  owned  by  the  "wealthy"  class,  is  something  like 
fifty  per  cent.;  and,  curiously  enough,  this  supposition  is  based 
upon  the  computations  of  Dr.  Chas.  B.  Spahr,  Geo.  K.  Holmes  of 
the  United  States  Census  Bureau,  and  others,  made  almost  coin- 
cident with  the  compilation  mentioned  by  Senator  Ingalls. 

Dr.  Spahr,  basing  his  computations  upon  the  returns  of  the 
surrogate  courts  of  the  State  of  New  York,  for  the  years  1889, 
1890,  and  1 89 1,  estimated*  that  one  per  cent,  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  United  States  then  owned  fifty-one  per  cent,  of  the 
wealth  of  the  nation;  while  Mr.  Holmes,  basing  his  estimates  upon 
an  analysis  of  the  United  States  Census  returns  for  1 890,  estimatedf 
that  three  one-hundredths  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  population  then 
owned  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  wealth  of  the  nation;  which  esti- 
mate, if  extended  to  cover  a  full  one  per  cent,  of  our  population, 
would  probably  give  practically  the  same  results  as  that  of  Dr. 
Spahr. 

These,  as  also  other  authorities,  show  a  substantial  agree- 
ment upon  the  part  of  statisticians,  that  one  per  cent.,  or  less 
than  one  per  cent.,  of  our  population  owned,  in  1890,  practically 
half  the  wealth  of  the  nation. 

But  whether  we  hold  with  Senator  Ingalls,  that  31,100  per- 
sons possessed  at  that  date  fifty-six  per  cent,  of  the  nation's 
wealth;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  with  Dr.  Spahr,  Mr.  Holmes,  and 
others,  that  one  per  cent,  of  our  then  population,  owned  fifty  per 
cent,  of  that  wealth; — is,  after  all,  a  matter  of  little  moment,  and 
can  little  affect  any  conclusions  we  may  reach.  That  these  same 
figures,  based  upon  the  statistics  of  seventeen  years  ago,  should 
however,  be  now  cited,  as  showing  the  degree  of  wealth  concen- 
tration to-day,  is  a  matter  of  considerable  importance.  It  merely 
illustrates  the  reluctance  to  break  away  from  any  given  estimate 
once  established. 

Yet  the  merest  glance  will  show  that,  so  far  from  remaining 
stationary,  this  wealth  concentration  has  proceeded  with  vastly 
accelerated  pace  during  the  last  seventeen  years. 

The  fortune  of  John  D.  Rockefeller,  for  instance,  was  but 
|ioo,ooo,ooo  in  1889;  while  his  present  income  alone  is  estimatedtt 

*See  Arena,  Vol.  iS,  Page  289.    i  Political  Science  Quarterly,  Dec,  1893. 
ttThe  New  York  Commercial,  January  — ,  1905. 


6  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

at  from  $72,000,000  to  $100,000,000  per  year.  Now,  inasmuch  as 
it  requires  all  the  labor  of  all  the  people  to  add  a  bare  $3,000,000,- 
000 — or  less  than  three  per  cent,  per  annum — to  our  national 
wealth  of  some  $106,000,000,000,  that  gentleman's  wealth,  judged 
by  its  earning  power,  cannot  by  any  species  of  computation  be 
placed  to-day  at  less  than  from  $2,500,000,000  to  $3,000,000,- 
000.  If  he  receives  one-fortieth  part  of  the  national  income, 
then  he  is,  to  all  intents  and  for  all  purposes,  possessed  of  one- 
fortieth  part  of  the  nation's  capital. 

But,  if  John  D.  Rockefeller's  wealth  has  increased,  during  the 
past  seventeen  years,  from  a  paltry  $100,000,000  to  $2,500,000,- 
000,  then  the  $40,000,000,  given  as  the  wealth  of  Wm.  Rockefeller 
in  1889,  must  have  increased  to  $1,000,000,000;  and  the  fortunes 
of  H.  H.  Rogers,  H.  M.  Flagler,  John  Archbold,  O.  M.  Payne,  and 
other  hangers-on  of  the  Rockefeller  chariot  wheels,  must  have 
grown  proportionately;  and  the  estimate  recently  made  by  the 
Hon.  Frank  S.  Monett,  of  Ohio,  and  widely  quoted  by  the  asso- 
ciated press,  of  some  $10,000,000,000 — or  nearly  the  one-tenth 
part  of  our  entire  national  wealth — as  the  possessions  of  that 
inner  circle  known  as  the  "Standard  Oil  Group,"  would  seem  to 
be  sufficiently  conservative. 

Similarly  the  wealth  of  the  Astor  family,  which  had  grown 
from  $6,000,000  to  $300,000,000  in  the  thirty-five  years  from  1854 
to  1889,  cannot,  in  the  seventeen  years  since  then,  be  supposed 
to  have  grown  to  less  than  $1,000,000,000.  So  also  the  wealth 
of  the  Vanderbilt  family,  which  had  grown  from  a  paltry  $1,- 
500,000  in  1854  to  $300,000,000  in  1889,  can  hardly  to-cfay  be 
less  than  $1,000,000,000.  The  fortunes,  moreover,  of  Mr.  Car- 
negie, Clark  of  Montana,  or  the  Gould  family,  must  range  some- 
where from  $500,000,000  to  $1,000,000,000  each.  And  at  least 
in  the  quarter-billion  would  range  the  accumulations  of  such  mas- 
ter minds  in  the  realm  of  high-finance  as  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  A. 
Belmont,  E.  H.  Harriman,  Marshall  Field,  James  J.  Hill,  and 
others  equally  well  known.  While  just  below  these  are  hun- 
drens  of  others,  whose  single  fortunes,  now  lost  in  the  more  gigan- 
tic aggregations,  equal  and  perhaps  exceed  the  largest  fortunes 
in  the  country  seventeen  years  ago. 

A  careful  analysis  of  the  census  for  1900  shows*  that,  as  clas- 
sified according  to  occupations,  250,251  persons  possessed  $67,- 
000,000.000  out  of  a  total  of  $95,000,000,000  given  as  our  then 
national  wealth;  8,429,845  persons  possessed  $24,000,000,000; 
while  the  remainder  of  "occupied"  persons,  some  20,393,137 
in  number,  possessed  but  $4,000,000,000. 

But  this  arrangement  by  occupations  is,  to  say  the  least, 
incomplete  in  arriving  at  any  estimate  of  wealth  concentration. 
Of  the  working  population,   as  also  of  the  so-called  "  middle 

*See  Socialist  Poster,  No.  i,  bj'  Lucien  Sanial. 


A     HALF    CENTURY    OF    WEALTH     CONCENTRATION    7 

classes,"  it  is  true  that  the  occupied  persons  usually  represent 
the  ownership  of  wealth,  and  an  arrangement  by  occupations, 
or  famihes,  is  therefore  approximately  just,  in  the  "wealthy 
class,"  however,  not  only  the  heads  of^ families,  but  their  wives, 
their  infants,  as  also  all  other  unoccupied  persons,  are  the  possessors 
of  wealth,  through  inheritance,  through  gift,  or  otherwise.  So 
that  the  250,251  names  of  this  class,  here  given,  cannot  be  said 
to  represent  that  many  families,  but  instead  so  many  individuals 
out  of  a  total  population  of  some  76,000,000. 

Reduced  to  percentages,  this  would  therefore  show  three- 
tenths  of  one  per  cent,  of  our  population  as  possessing  seventy-one 
per  cent,  of  the  nation's  wealth  m  1900;  a  vast  increase,  as  will  be 
seen,  over  the  showing  for  1890,  and  furnishing  a  striking  indica- 
tion of  what  we  are  to  expect  in  this  year  of  our  Lord,  1907. 

if,  then,  we  increase  this  list  of  250,251  names  to,  say  800,000 
names — or  one  per  cent,  of  our  population — this  would  probably 
include  all  in  independent  circumstances  as  well  as  the  enormously 
rich;  and  it  would  apparently  be  an  underestimate,  rather  than 
an  overestimate,  to  place  their  present  combined  possessions  at 
an  increase  of  forty  per  cent,  over  the  showing  for  1890,  and  twenty 
per  cent,  over  the  showing  for  1900;  or,  in  other  words,  at  ninety 
per  cent,  of  the  total  aggregate  wealth  of  the  country  to-day, 
estimated  at  1 106,000,000,000. 

These  conclusions  are  startling,  it  must  be  admitted;  and 
they  are,  of  course,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  problem,  inca- 
pable of  exact  verification.  They  are,  however,  certainly  borne 
out  by  this  comparison  of  the  census  of  1900  with  the  showing 
of  wealth  concentration  at  previous  periods.  Nor  yet  are  they 
so  startling,  or  so  incredible,  as  the  known  increase  of  individual 
fortunes.  If  John  D.  Rockefeller  alone  owns  to-day  the  one- 
fortieth  part  of  all  the  nation's  wealth;  and  if  the  immediate 
group  of  which  he  is  the  central  figure,  called  "The  Standard  Oil 
Group,"  is  possessed  of  nearly  one-tenth  part  of  all  that  wealth; 
then  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  the  thousands,  and  tens  of  thou- 
sands, of  other  names  of  enormous  wealth,  by  whom  they  are  sur- 
rounded, are  possessed  of  less  than  the  proportion  named. 

The  Steel  Trust,  for  instance,  has  added  its  dozens  of  names 
of  greatest  wealth  to  our  roll  of  multi-millionaires;  the  Copper 
Trust,  and  now  the  Beef  Trust,  have  added  their  full  quota;  while 
there  are  some  seven  hundred  other  trusts,  together  with  bank- 
ing, insurance,  railroad,  and  other  public  service,  corporations 
innumerable,  all  piling  up  their  silent,  relentless  billions  for  their 
proud  owners. 

It  was  only  recently  that  a  man  by  the  name  of  Harkness 
died  in  Pittsburg,  and  another  by  the  name  of  Lockhart.  I  be- 
lieve, in  Philadelphia,  whose  names  were  practically  unknown 
to  the  general  public,    and  yet  the  fortune   of  each  of   them 


8  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

was  reliably  given  at  from  $150,000,000  to  $175,000,000;  or 
yet  another  by  the  name  of  Weyerhauser,  *a  citizen  of  a  west- 
ern town,  altogether  unknown,  is  declared  to  have  "cornered" 
the  timber  of  the  country,  as  Rockefeller  has  "cornered"  its  oil, 
counting  his  wealth  almost  into  the  billions  as  a  result.  And 
scarcely  a  week  passes  that  we  do  not  hear  of  some  man,  woman, 
or  even  child,  all  but  unknown,  and  yet  whose  fortunes  are  vari- 
ously given  at  from  $50,000,000  to  $100,000,000,  or  even  more. 
Truly,  with  the  tormented  one  of  old,  industrial  society  must 
to-day  exclaim,  "Our  name  is  legion!" 

THE   GROWING    POVERTY  OF    INDUSTRIAL  SOCIETY 

But  it  is  contended  that,  notwithstanding  these  enormous 
fortunes,  the  benefits  of  our  national  prosperity  are  fairly  dis- 
tributed; and,  along  with  glowing  pictures  of  our  achievements, 
reference  is  made  to  the  "comfortable  homes,"  the  "well  stocked 
markets  and  shops,"  the  "superior  methods  of  education,"  as 
well  as  other  increased  comforts  of  civilization,  now  enjoyed  even 
by  the  poorer  classes. 

These  great  fortunes  are  pictured  as  a  disguised  blessing;  and 
the  toilers  of  the  world  are  assured  that  they  are  benefitted  by 
existing  conditions  equally  with  the  enormously  rich. 

In  proof  of  this  contention  we  are  informed f  that  our  savings 
bank  deposits  averaged  $16.72  per  capita  in  1900,  as  against  a 
showing  of  but  $4.75  per  capita  in  i860:  and,  moreover,  that  the 
wages  paid  the  18,000,000  wage  receivers  in  the  United  States,  in 
1900,  averaged  not  less  than $400 per  annum;  showing  "that,  from 
the  annual  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the  country  a  large  share 
is  distributed  to  those  who  are  wage  earners." 

Our  savings  bank  deposits  will,  however,  be  found  to  belong 
very  largely  to  other  classes  besides  the  "  working  population." 

But  even  were  they  the  fortunate  possessors  of  every  dollar  ot 
these  deposits,  yet  a  credit  of  $16.72  in  the  Savings  Bank  can 
hardly  be  said  to  place  the  workingman  in  the  same  class  with 
the  growing  rich.  And  while  it  is  true  that  our  savings  bank 
deposits  have  grown  since  i860,  this  is  but  because  savings  banks 
were  not  then  so  common  as  now,  and  our  population  was  more 
largely  rural.  Both  from  habit  and  situation,  our  frugal-minded 
ancestors  were  much  more  likely  to  keep  their  savings  each  in 
his  strong  box  at  home,  than  go  in  search  of  such  institutions. 

Besides,  fifty  years  ago  the  lines  between  wealth  and  poverty 
and  capital  and  labor,  had  as  yet  scarcely  been  drawn. 

The  toilers  of  the  world  were  farmers  and  mechanics,  pursuing 

•Cosmopolitan  Magazine,  December,  1906. 

f  "Concentration  of  Wealth,"  by  Carroll  D.  Wright,  The  Independent, 
May  I,  K902. 


GROWING    POVERTY    OF    INDUSTRIAL    SOCIETY         q 

their  independent  vocations;  and  owning  their  farms,  shops, 
and  places  of  business,  and  usually  their  homes.  To-day  they 
are,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  employ  of  great  corporations 
"depending  entirely  upon  wages  paid."  They  have  no  shops, 
nor  places  of  business,  and  nearly  two-thirds  of  them  are  home- 
less, the  tenants  of  the  rich;  while  the  homes  of  thirty-three  per 
cent,  of  the  remaining  one-third  are  mortgaged.*  Many  of  them 
are  compelled  to  go  into  debt,  against  the  coming  pay-day,  for 
the  very  necessaries  of  life;  and  in  case  of  sickness  or  the  loss  of 
employment  fall  inevitably  behind. 

To  say,  then,  that  they  have  a  few  dollars  standing  to  their 
credit  in  the  savings  bank,  is  not  to  prove  that  they  are  becom- 
ing rich,  or  even  forehanded;  but  merely  illustrates  the  desperate 
desire  of  men  with  nothing,  to  have  a  few  dollars  laid  away  with 
which  to  keep  their  families  from  starving  in  case  of  sickness  or 
the  loss  of  employment;  and  this  although  their  very  household 
goods  may  be  under  mortgage,  and  their  debts  remain  unpaid. 

Nor  yet  does  the  average  annual  wage  of  $400,  paid  to  the 
18,000,000  wage  receivers  in  the  United  States,  show  the  posses- 
sion of  wealth  in  our  "working  population." 

The  wages  paid  the  workingmen  are  a  necessary  charge  upon 
wealth  production;  and  form  no  part  of  the  wealth  accumulation. 
They  do  not,  then,  show  "that  from  the  annual  accumulation  of 
wealth  in  this  country,  a  large  share  is  distributed  to  those  who 
are  wage  earners."  So  long  as  human  labor  continues  to  be 
necessary  to  wealth  production,  it  stands  the  owners  of  wealth 
to  set  aside  a  sufficient  sum  to  maintain  the  laborers  in  their 
employ,  just  as  they  must  repair  and  renew  the  machines  in 
their  service. 

And  more  than  this  bare  provision,  the  laborer  has  long  since 
ceased  to  expect.  Our  economists  have  long  preached  the  doc- 
trine that, — "The  wages  of  labor  are  determined  by  the  amount 
required  to  support  the  life  of  the  laborer,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  he  cannot  accept  less";  and  no  sensible,  well-ordered  body 
of  workingmen,  even  in  the  heat  of  the  most  sanguinary  strike, 
would  dream  of  asking  more,  or  of  laying  any  claim  to  the  vast 
accumulations  of  their  employers. 

If,  then,  they  make  any  complaint,  and  risk  loss  of  employment, 
and  starvation  even,  in  enforcing  their  complaints  by  strikes, 
this  is  but  because  they  fmd  that  the  boasted  economic  law,  which 
is  said  to  assure  them  a  living  wage,  is  now  ruled  out  by  monopoly; 
and  that,  what  with  the  increased  cost  of  living  due  to  monopoly 
in  its  various  forms,  the  I400  average  annual  wage  dictated  to 
them  is  insufficient  upon  which  to  support  life.  Only  by  means 
of  credit  are  many  of  them,  in  fact,  enabled  to  get  along  at  all. 
Their  wages  are  ordinarily  consumed  in  advance  for  the  week's 

*U.  S.  Census,  1900. 


lo  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

expenses;  and  many  of  them  are  in  arrears  for  months  to  their 
tradesmen  and  other  sources.  Should  they  then  lose  their  em- 
ployment, or  their  creditors  pursue  them,  they  are  in  danger  of 
being  turned  into  the  streets,  and  of  suffering  for  the  commonest 
necessaries  of  life. 

And  practically  the  same  condition  holds  of  the  6,000,000 
farmers  of  the  country.  They  too  find  that — what  with  the  price 
of  all  their  products  reduced  by  extortionate  charges  on  their 
way  to  the  markets,  and  by  speculators  and  trusts  when  they 
reach  the  markets,  and  what  with  the  increased  cost  of  living  due 
to  the  same  sources — they  have  latterly  been  falling  behind, 
rather  than  advancing  in  the  possession  of  wealth. 

The  census  returns  show  that  the  average  value  per  farm  of 
all  the  farm  property  in  the  United  States — including  the  land, 
improvements,  stock  and  implements — was  less  by  $300  in  1900, 
than  forty  years  before  in  i860. 

And  yet  the  mortgaged  farm  was  then  the  exception;  now 
we  almost  say  it  is  the  rule.  In  the  single  decade  from  1880  to 
1890,  the  farm  mortgages  of  the  country  increased  over  seventy 
per  cent.,  while  the  increase  in  the  number  of  farms  was  only 
about  twelve  per  cent.,  and  the  value  of  farm  property,  per  farm, 
diminished  during  the  decade.  Our  census  for  1900  is  inexcus- 
ably silent  upon  this  important  subject;  and  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing  what  has  been  the  increase  in  farm  mortgages  since 
then. 

This  much,  however,  we  learn,* — that  in  1900  more  than  one- 
third  of  all  the  farmers  of  the  country  were  tenants;  while  of  the 
remaining  two-thirds  the  farms  of  nearly  one-third  were  mort- 
gaged. And,  strange  to  say,  the  showing  is  worst  in  the  great 
agricultural  states  of  the  north  and  west.  In  Iowa  only  thirty-one 
per  cent,  of  the  farms  are  owned  free,  in  Illinois  thirty-six  per 
cent.,  Nebraska  thirty-five  per  cent.,  Indian  Territory  twenty-five 
per  cent.,  Kansas  thirty-six  per  cent.,  Texas  thirty-eight  percent.. 
New  York  forty-one  per  cent.,  and  so  on  throughout  the  list; — 
all  the  remainder  of  the  farms  being  either  hired  or  mortgaged. 

If,  now,  to  this  mortgage  indebtedness  upon  their  farms,  we 
add  the  mortgage  indebtedness  upon  their  stock,  their  crops,  and 
even  their  farming  implements,  and  household  goods,  and  their 
indebtedness  to  banks,  tradesmen,  and  other  sources,  we  shall 
find  no  reason  to  class  the  farmers  of  the  country  with  our  billion- 
aires and  others  of  the  growing  rich.  On  the  contrary,  in  the 
east  and  south  the  farmers  have  latterly  been  compelled  to  desert 
their  farms  by  the  thousands;  while  in  the  fertile  north  and  west 
the  foreclosure  of  the  mortgages  upon  their  farms  has  driven  other 
hundreds  of  thousands  into  the  ranks  of  mere  tenants,  or  worse 
still  into  the  lowest  ranks  of  wage  earners. 

*U.  S.  Census,  1900. 


GROWING    POVERTY    OF    INDUSTRIAL    SOCIETY       ii 

'  It  is,  indeed,  because  they  are  unable,  with  all  their  efforts,  to 
make  any  headway,  that  we  have  witnessed  the  Farmers' 
Alliance,  Grange,  Populist,  and  other  like  agitation,  of  recent  years. 

But  the  18,000,000  wage  earners  and  the  6,000,000  farmers, 
with  their  families,  comprise  nine-tenths  of  our  entire  population; 
and  their  condition  is  necessarily  shared  by  the  petty  tradesmen, 
shopkeepers,  professional  men,  and  others,  who  constitute  per- 
haps nine-tenths  of  the  remaining  one-tenth  of  our  population. 
These  depend  for  their  sustenance  upon  the  great  producing 
classes,  and  must  share  in  their  indigence  as  well. 

Nine-tenths  of  all  our  business  men  are  failures,  so  far  as  the 
accumulation  of  wealth  is  concerned.  And  fully  that  per  cent, 
of  our  professional  men  never  become  anything  else  but  failures 
under  these  conditions.  The  average  annual  salary  of  all  the 
ministers  of  the  country  is  estimated  at  between  $500  and  |6oo; 
and,  excluding  the  small  number  of  wealthy  parishes,  the  average 
for  the  vast  majority  at  between  $400  and  I500.  This  upon 
which  to  support  their  families  in  these  days  of  trust  prices, 
satisfy  their  expected  charities,  and  sustain  the  dignity  of  their 
positions!  The  average  for  the  educators  of  the  land  would  be 
even  lower.  And,  if  allowance  be  made  for  uncollectable  ac- 
counts, the  showing  for  the  vast  majority  of  lawyers  and  physi- 
cians would  probably  be  little,  if  any,  better. 

Only  those,  in  fact,  who  are  so  fortunate  as  to  enter  the 
service  of  the  rich,  can  afford  to  wear  their  costly  livery,  and 
eat  of  the  lavish  crumbs  which  fall  from  their  table.  For  the  vast 
majority  there  remains  nothing  but  a  constant  grinding  struggle 
to  make  "ends  meet";  and  many  are  compelled  to  give  over  the 
struggle  at  last,  to  accept  the  more  certain,  if  still  beggarly, 
stipend  of  mere  wage  earners. 

It  is  vain,  then,  and  idle,  to  talk  of  the  increased  comforts  of 
our  civilization;  as  if  riding  in  street  cars,  and  talking  through 
telephones,  were  any  compensation  for  the  lack  of  bread,  the  fear 
of  want,  and  the  shames  now  put  upon  labor.  It  is  useless,  too, 
to  say  that  the  laborer  is  not  now  as  thrifty  as  formerly;  for  he 
is  compelled  to  stint  on  every  hand  in  order  but  to  be  able  to  live. 
A  man  is  not  in  much  of  a  mood  to  squander,  when  his  wife  and 
children  are  in  need  of  the  common  necessaries  of  life,  and  on  the 
morrow  may  be  in  actual  want.  Or,  if  occasionally  driven  into 
spendthrift  habits,  this  is  but  the  recklessness  of  despair;  like 
the  suicide  flinging  away  an  existence  that  seems  hardly  worth 
the  keeping. 

Equally  wide  and  irrelevant  of  the  question,  is  the  assertion, 
so  often  insisted  upon,  of  the  benefits  conferred  upon  all  by  the 
so-called  "organization  of  industry,"  and  the  present  industrial 
regime. 

It  were  better  to  have   postponed,  or  even  to  have  entirely 


12  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WBIALTH 

foregone,  these  benefits,  if  they  but  result  in  deprivation  and  hard- 
ship to  the  great  mass  of  mankind.  "Greater  is  he  that  ruleth 
himself,  than  he  that  taketh  a  city;"  and  our  conquest  and  in- 
vasion of  the  world's  markets  might  well  have  been  postponed, 
until  we  should  have  learned  how  to  so  govern  our  relations 
among  ourselves,  as  to  make  these  achievements  a  blessing 
rather  than  a  curse. 

Nor  can  we  listen  to  any  comparison  of  the  "wages  of  super- 
intendence," the  "dividends  to  capital,"  and  the  "wages  paid 
labor,"  as  showing  a  fair  division  between  labor  and  capital. 
When  the  toilers  see  these  vast  millions,  and  even  billions, 
amassed  from  their  toil;  and  contrast  these  fortunes  with  their 
own  impoverished  and  desperate  condition; — they  know  that 
somewhere,  and  somehow,  there  is  a  missing  factor,  a  hidden 
legerdemain,  by  which  their  earnings  have  been  swept  from 
them  as  surely  as  the  professional  gambler  sweeps  into  his  pocket 
the  money  of  his  victims. 

We  are,  in  fact,  a  nation  of  debtors.  It  was  said  of  old,  "All 
roads  lead  to  Rome;"  and  although  we  have  to-day  broad  acres 
and  many  towns,  the  shadow  of  Wall  Street  rests  upon  all,  and 
to  Wall  Street  flows  by  inevitable  operation  all  the  wealth  we 
produce. 

The  census  of  1890  gave  the  quasi-public  corporation  debt  of 
the  country  as  $5,000,000,000,  the  real  estate  indebtedness  of 
private  corporations  and  individuals  as  $6,000,000,000  other  items 
of  private  indebtedness,  $5,000,000,000  ;  while  the  national,  and 
other  public,  indebtedness  aggregated  $2,027,170,546;  making  a 
grand  total  of  $18,027,170,546;  or  nearly  one-third  of  the  then 
aggregate  wealth  of  the  nation. 

The  census  of  1900  is  again  reprehensibly  silent  upon  this 
important  subject.  But,  assuming  that  our  indebtedness  has 
grown  only  in  the  same  proportion  as  our  wealth  itself  has  grown, 
it  would  yet  be  something  like  $30,000,000,000,  or  about  $375 
per  capita  of  our  population;  in  other  words, about  thirteen  times 
as  great  as  our  per  capita  money  circulation,  and  twenty-three 
times  as  great  as  our  savings  bank  deposits. 

The  money  circulation  may,  indeed,  be  anywhere  but  in  the 
hands  of  the  people;  and  the  savings  bank  deposits  belong  to 
others  than  the  toilers;  but  the  debt  burden  we  may  be  sure  is 
every  dollar  of  it  borne  by  them.  We  have  all  laughed  at  the 
simplicity  of  the  countryman,  who  thought  to  lighten  the  burden 
of  the  beast  he  was  riding,  by  placing  the  bag  of  grain  upon  his 
own  shoulders,  himself  riding  the  while;  and  we  cannot  our- 
selves be  so  simple  as  to  think  that  the  public  or  corporate  debt 
is  any  less  borne  by  us  than  our  own  more  humble  obligations. 
Upon  the  back  of  that  great  and  simple  brute,  called  "  Industrial 
Society,"  are  all  these  riders  and  their  burdens  borne. 


GROWING    POVERTY    OF    INDUSTRIAL    SOCIETY       13 

But  the  stocks  of  our  railway,  trust,  and  other  corporations, 
are  expected  to  draw  dividends;  and  constitute  as  truly  a  debt 
upon  the  part  of  the  public  to  the  owners  of  wealth,  as  do  mort- 
gages and  bonds  themselves.  And  these  under  their  present  enor- 
mous overcapitalization,  would  perhaps  double  our  debt  burden; 
the  whole  constituting  a  lien,  equivalent  to  a  first  mortgage,  not 
only  upon  the  industry,  but  also  upon  the  property  of  every  citi- 
zen; with  the  power  given  these  corporations  to  levy  a  tax  there- 
upon, as  extortionate  in  extent  as  were  that  debt  burden  to  exceed, 
in  fact,  all  the  actual  tangible  wealth  of  the  nation. 

And  yet  we  are  comfortably  assured,  that  because  there  are 
so  many  farmers  and  wage  earners  owning  farms  and  homes,  or 
other  forms  of  wealth,  free  of  incumbrance,  we  have,  therefore, 
nothing  to  fear  from  the  concentration  of  wealth! 

On  the  contrary  no  estimate,  as  to  wealth  concentration,  can 
approximate  to  anything  like  the  truth,  without  taking  into 
account  the  enormous  overcapitalization  of  our  public  service 
and  other  corporations.  So  far  as  the  public  is  concerned  the 
payment  of  dividends  upon  these  stocks  differs  only  in  name  from 
the  payment  of  interest  upon  mortgages.  Equally  so  it  is  a  matter 
of  profound  indifference  to  the  individual  farmer  or  home  owner 
whether  the  mortgage  or  other  incumbrance,  upon  which  he 
pays  interest,  rests  upon  his  property  singly,  or  in  common 
with  the  property  of  others. 

It  is  not,  indeed,  because  of  their  tracks  or  rolling  stock,  that 
our  railways  are  enabled  to  capitalize  their  properties  at  three, 
or  even  five,  times  their  actual  worth,  and  dispose  of  these 
"securities"  to  the  public.  It  is,  instead,  because  of  their  fran- 
chises and  privileges  as  common  carriers;  and  these  franchises 
and  privileges  as  John  Stuart  Mill  long  ago  pointed  out  *  are 
nothing,  if  not  the  power  to  tax  the  public  —  to  tax  the  industry 
and  propert}'  of  the  nation. 

The  excess  of  capitalization  of  these  corporations  over  and 
above  the  actual  cost  or  worth  of  their  properties,  thus  operates 
as  a  "blanket"  mortgage  upon  all  the  property  of  the  people, 
with  nothing  to  sustain  it  but  this  taxing  power.  And  precisely 
the  same  considerations  apply  to  the  trusts,  and  other  corporations 
possessing  monopoly,  or  taxing,  powers. 

But  so  enormous,  and  so  iniquitous,  is  the  overcapitalization 
of  these  corporations  that  this  overcapitalization  alone  would 
probably  exceed  the  value  of  all  the  farm  property  in  the  country, 
or  the  "equities"  and  other  possessions  of  the  farmers,  over  and 
above  their  debts  and  mortgages,  added  to  the  meager  posses- 
sions of  all  our  wage  earners.  Not,  therefore,  until  this  incum- 
brance is  "  lifted,"  can  the  farmer  be  said  in  any  true  sense  to 
own  his  farm,  or  the  wage  earner  his  home.  And  not  until  then 
♦"Political  Economy."    Book  V.,  Cliap.  II.,  Page  11. 


14  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

can  any  enumeration  of  wealth,  as  being  "popularly  owned"  be 
considered  at  all  conclusive  upon  the  subject  of  wealth  concen- 
tration. 

It  is,  however,  asserted  that  these  corporations  render  valuable 
services;  and  that  the  charges  they  make  are  but  a  return  for 
such  services,  of  which  there  can  be  no  cause  for  complaint. 

Not  so.  if  1  employ  a  servant  upon  a  free  and  equal  agreement 
as  to  what  his  services  are  worth,  then  is  the  wage  he  receives 
justly  and  fairly  a  return  for  the  service  rendered.  But  if,  now,  I 
have  given  that  servant  possession  of  my  kitchen,  or  my  home,  with 
the  power  to  control  for  his  own  profit  the  price  of  all  the  supplies 
of  my  table,  and  the  very  entrance  or  exit  to  my  home,  or  refuse 
me  altogether  such  supplies  or  service,  then  is  he  no  longer  my 
servant,  but  my  absolute  master.  1  must  still  live;  and  if  he 
thus  controls  the  means  and  avenues  of  my  labor  and  living,  then 
is  he  the  master  of  my  toil,  of  my  property,  and  scarcely,  indeed, 
can  I  call  my  body  my  own. 

it  is  precisely  such  control  that  these  corporations  have 
usurped  over  every  field  of  labor,  over  all  the  supplies  of  living, 
and  over  all  public  services.  And  the  charges  they  extort,  by 
virtue  of  such  control,  not  only  pay  for  the  services  —  which  not 
they  but  their  employees  render — but  has  enabled  them  as  well 
to  amass  their  uncounted  billions.  To  say,  then,  that  these 
charges,  in  all  their  enormity,  are  but  a  just  return  for  services 
rendered,  is  but  to  drivel — to  talk  the  language  of  utter  nonsense. 

Hardly,  indeed,  except  by  scant  courtesy,  can  we  be  said  to 
any  longer  have  a  "  middle  class  "  The  independent  manufacturer, 
merchant,  or  other  employer  of  labor,  is  rapidly  being  absorbed 
or  routed  by  the  trusts  and  other  corporations;  only  the  petty 
tradesmen,  shopkeepers,  and  the  like,  remaining  as  the  mere 
purveyors  or  distributors  for  these  gigantic  combinations. 

But  if  the  independent  employers  of  labor,  are  being  thus 
eliminated  from  the  ranks  of  our  so-called  "middle  class;"  then 
surely  the  farmer  or  wage-earner  cannot  be  said,  under  existing 
circumstances,  to  belong  to  that  class.  Professor  Walker — than 
whom  there  is  no  higher  authority — has  stated*  that,  deducting 
rents  and  interest,  the  income  of  the  farmers  of  the  country  is 
less  than  the  average  income  even  of  the  wage  earners. 

The  tax  levied  by  these  corporations  rests  a  burden  upon  the 
farmer's  property  and  toil,  in  the  shape  of  excessive  transpor- 
tation rates,  the  reduced  price  received  for  his  products,  as  well 
as  in  the  increased  cost  of  all  his  supplies;  while  upon  the 
wage  earner  it  bears  not  less  heavily  in  the  beggarly  wage 
dictated  to  him,  as  well  as  in  the  extortionate  cost  of  his  living. 
It  but  remains,  then,  for  the  farmer  and  wage-earner  to  fully 
comprehend  the  nature  of  this  tax,  in  its  direct  and  inevitable 

*See  "  The  American  Farmer,"  by  A.  M   Simons. 


A    REIGN    OF    CORRUPTION    AND    PLUNDER  15 

bearing  upon  the  labor  and  living  of  each,  when  they  will  at 
last  realize  that  their  interests  are  one;  that  they  are  alike  the 
victims  of  a  common  foe.  Then,  too,  will  they  awake  to  the 
necessity  of  united  action. 

Probably  the  one-thousandth  part  of  our  population  can  be 
said  to  be  enormously  rich;  perhaps  the  one-twentieth  part  in 
comfortable  circumstances;  while  all  the  remainder,  constitut- 
ing fully  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  whole,  cannot  be  said  to  live 
other  than  a  precarious  existence;  compelled  to  depend  upon  their 
day's  labor  for  life  itself,  and  if  the  right  to  toil  be  denied  them, 
brought  face  to  face  with  actual  want.  A  sad  spectacle  this, 
under  any  circumstances.  Viewed  in  connection  with  our  enor- 
mous wealth  production,  and  the  billionaire  fortunes  of  the  day, 
it  is  an  infamous  spectacle! 


A  REIGN  OF  CORRUPTION  AND  PLUNDER 

Surely  it  is  worth  our  while  to  inquire  how  a  power  so  vast, 
and  which  means  so  much  to  industrial  society,  has  been  acquired. 
If  these  enormous  fortunes  have  been  honestly  earned,  and  are 
the  rightful  property  of  their  possessors,  then  must  the  world  of 
toil  beneath  submit  as  best  it  can.  But,  at  least,  when  these  pos- 
sessions and  this  power  involve  the  well  being,  and  even  the  lives, 
of  the  struggling  masses,  those  whose  dearest  and  most  vital  in- 
terests are  at  stake  may  be  excused  if  they  inquire  how  the  pos- 
sessions and  the  power  of  these  lords  of  the  industrial  world  have 
been  obtained. 

These  millions  tell,  in  fact,  no  honest  tale.  If  a  vagrant,  with 
no  visible  means  of  support,  is  found  in  possession  of  valuable 
treasure,  he  is  arrested  on  suspicion;  the  presumption  being  that 
he  could  not  have  earned  it,  and  hence  must  have  appropriated 
it  from  others. 

Similarly,  when  single  individuals  are  found  in  possession  of 
hundreds  of  millions,  and  even  billions  of  dollars,  the  suspicion 
attaches  that  so  much  wealth  could  not  have  been  honestly  earned. 
The  wage  earner,  whose  income  averages,  as  we  are  told,  some 
I400,  and  who  counts  himself  fortunate  if  he  is  able  to  lay  by 
that  sum  in  the  course  of  a  life  time,  as  also  the  farmer,  whose 
toil  and  that  of  his  entire  family  scarce  suffices  at  the  year's  end 
to  meet  his  expenses  much  less  to  pay  off  the  mortgage  upon  his 
farm  or  permit  him  to  lay  by  anything,  cannot  believe  that  a 
single  individual  in  this  land  has  actually  "earned"  a  billion  dol- 
lars in  the  course  of  a  short  generation;  nor  yet  that  there  exists 
tens  of  thousands  of  other  individuals  in  this  republic,  the  aver- 
age "earnings"  of  each  of  whom  equal  the  combined  possessions 
of  a  full  hundred  thousand  of  the  sons  of  toil. 


1 6  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

But  if  these  fortunes  have  not  been  earned,  then  the  conclu- 
sion is  irresistible  that  they  have  been,  as  in  the  other  case,  appro- 
priated. 

The  toilers  of  the  world  may  not,  indeed,  see  by  what  means 
this  is  done;  and  it  is,  perhaps,  not  to  be  expected  that  they 
should,  if  the  midnight  burglar,  or  sneak-thiei,  would  filch  our 
belongings,  he  does  it  secretly,  and  does  not  advertise  his  methods. 
And  it  can  hardly  be  expected  that  their  more  ambitious  rivals 
should  pursue  tactics  any  more  honest  or  open,  when  proposing 
to  relieve  the  public  of  all  its  earnings  and  possessions.  But  that 
they  have  succeeded  in  doing  this,  and  beyond  all  proportion  to 
the  pictured  "wages  of  superintendence,"  or  "just  dividends  to 
capital,"  their  heaped-up  billions  show.  And  when  the  people 
see  these,  and  realize  too  their  own  meager  returns  from  all  our 
boasted  prosperity,  they  can  but  conclude  that,  as  in  the  other 
case,  their  loss  has  been  brought  about  by  secret,  dark,  and  mid- 
night methods. 

Our  multi-millionaires  are,  it  is  true,  fond  of  pointing  to  the 
honest  toil  by  which  their  first  savings  were  earned,  as  evidence 
of  a  blameless  career. 

So  also,  could  many  inhabitants  of  our  jails  point  with  pride 
to  the  innocence  of  their  early  manhood.  But  we  know  that 
when  their  careers  of  crime  began,  they  took  to  other  occupations. 
Even  so,  when  these  men  of  enormous  wealth  began  piling  up 
their  millions,  it  was  by  far  other  means  than  their  first  dollars  were 
earned.  It  was  by  seizing  upon  some  necessity  of  life  of  a  nation, 
or  even  of  the  whole  of  industrial  society,  and  compelling  the 
world  of  toil  and  living  to  come  to  them,  and  accept  their  terms 
of  absolute  dictation,  that  their  wealth  grew  to  these  monstrous 
proportions.  Through  the  exploitation  of  land  and  mineral  re- 
sources, or  of  railways,  money,  and  other  public  utilities,  as  well 
as  of  industry — by  railway,  banking,  trust,  and  other  corpora- 
tions— have  these  millions,  and  even  billions,  grown  to  their 
present  proportions. 

These  fortunes  first  began  to  mount  up  with  the  development 
of  our  railways  and  other  public  utilities  such  as  telegraphs,  tele- 
phones, street  railways,  gas  and  electric  lighting,  and  the  like. 

Such  concerns  are  public  necessities,  without  which  modern 
industry  and  living  would  be  practically  impossible.  Yet  our 
policy  from  the  beginning  has  been  to  turn  all  these  highways 
over  to  private  corporations  for  their  profit;  and  these  corpora- 
tions proceeded  at  once  to  corrupt  Congress,  state  legislatures, 
and  even  county  and  city  oificials,  thereby  to  reap  larger  gains. 
It  is  related*  that  when  a  group  of  New  York  capitalists  were 
bidding  for  the  street  railways  of  Toronto,  Canada,  they  laughed 
at  the  idea  of  paying  any   part   of  the  earnings   to  the  city. 

*W.  S.  Gregory,  in  the  Outlook,  Feb.  5,  1898. 


A     REIGN    OF    CORRUPTION    AND    PLUNDER  17 

"  They  had  been  accustomed "  (so  they  informed  one  of  the 
committee)  "to  pay  something  to  the  aldermen,  but  nothing  to 
the  municipahty."  And  that  this  practice  has  been  almost  uni- 
versal, recent  investigations  and  exposures  have  only  too  clearly 
shown. 

These  corporations  have,  in  fact,  had  their  paid  lobbyists  in 
every  law-making  body;  and  have  spent  of  their  money  freely 
in  obtaining  their  franchises  and  special  privileges,  as  well  as 
enormous  land  and  money  grants,  from  the  general  government, 
and  from  the  various  states,  counties,  towns  and  villages,  in  which 
these  properties  were  situated,  or  through  which  they  passed; 
often  more  than  sufficient  in  the  aggregate  to  pay  for  their  entire 
construction  and  equipment. 

Yet  the  roads  and  other  properties,  when  built,  were  capitalized 
and  bonded  generally  far  in  excess  of  their  actual  worth;  all  the 
aids,  as  well  as  other  proceeds,  having  gone  into  the  pockets  of 
these  financiers  as  their  profits.  The  result  was  that  the  public 
was  left  in  every  instance  an  excessively  debt  burdened  road  to 
support;  and  charges  were  extortionate  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 
for  the  same  reason  the  service  uniformly  wretched,  if  our  rail- 
way and  other  corporation  promoters  accumulated  their  hundreds 
of  millions  almost  in  a  day,  the  public  alone  bore  the  burden, 
in  fraudulently  obtained  grants  and  franchises,  in  extortionate 
charges,  inefficient  service,  and  the  oppression  of  labor. 

This  same  process  of  overcapitalization  was  repeated,  in  per- 
haps a  yet  more  aggravated  form,  in  the  organization  of  the  trusts. 
So  great  was  the  greed  of  the  principal  owners  and  organizers  to 
obtain  the  highest  prices,  and  reap  the  largest  profits,  that  prac- 
tically all  of  the  trusts  are  to-day  overcapitalized,  often  twice, 
thrice,  and  even  five  times,  the  real  worth  of  their  properties; 
with  the  inevitable  result  that  trust  prices,  and  other  aeaUngs 
with  the  public,  are  extortionate  to  the  last  degree. 

By  these,  and  other  like  means  and  methods,  are  all  the  earn- 
ings and  savings  of  the  people  being  swept  into  the  pockets  of 
the  gigantic  gamblers  who  deal  the  hands,  and  play  the  cards, 
(and  mark  them  as  well),  in  our  great  national  confidence  game 
of  Wall  Street. 

Little  matters  it,  indeed,  to  the  farmers  to  be  told  that  their 
crops  give  promise  of  untold  wealth,  when  they  know  that  the 
railway,  trust,  and  other  corporations,  have  the  power  to  rob 
them  of  every  dollar  of  profits,  through  transportation  rates,  ele- 
vator charges,  packing  house  extortions,  and  the  control  of  prices 
by  speculators  and  trusts.  Little  matters  it  to  the  wage-earner 
to  be  told  of  the  increased  power  of  his  labor  to  produce  wealth, 
when  he  knows  that  in  all  this  increased  wealth  production  he 
has  no  share;  but  must  sell  his  labor,  as  any  other  commodity, 
to  the  owners  of  the  corporations,  who  stand  between  him  and 


i8  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

the  wealth  he  creates,  with  the  power  to  dictate  the  terms  upon 
which  he  shall  toil,  or  turn  him  altogether  away  from  the  right 
to  labor,  and  with  it  from  the  very  right  to  live.  Little  matters 
it,  again,  to  the  whole  body  of  society,  whether  as  producers  or 
consumers,  to  be  told  of  our  enormous  wealth  production,  or  of 
the  boasted  supremacy  of  this  nation  in  the  markets  of  the  world; 
when  they  know  that  between  them  and  the  use  or  enjoyment 
of  this  wealth  stand  the  trusts,  transportation,  and  other  cor- 
porations, with  the  power  to  tax  them,  even  to  the  starvation 
point,  upon  all  the  products  of  labor  and  supplies  of  life. 

Nor  m  this  brief  survey  of  the  means  by  which  these  vast  and 
countless  fortunes  have  been  amassed,  can  we  afford  to  overlook 
the  control  and  distribution  of  money,  by  banks  and  other  fman- 
cial    institutions. 

Money  is,  not  less  than  our  great  public  highways  themselves, 
a  public  necessity  of  the  most  vital  nature.  It  is  alike  the  meas- 
ure of  value,  and  medium  of  exchange.  The  merchant's  coun- 
ters may  be  filled  with  goods,  the  farmer's  granaries  may  be 
full  to  bursting,  and  labor  stand  anxious  to  barter  its  services  for 
these  supplies.  But,  while  each  has  what  the  other  needs  and 
must  have,  simple  barter  is  impossible.  Labor  must  be  paid  in 
money;  the  farmer  must  receive  money  for  his  products,  the 
merchant  must  receive  money  for  his  goods.  With  money  alone 
can  each  in  turn  satisfy  his  creditors;  with  money  alone  can  each 
purchase  the  wherewithal  to  satisfy  his  wants. 

Appreciating  this,  its  public  and  vital  nature,  all  governments 
issue  money.  But  its  distribution,  like  the  control  of  our  public 
highways,  we  have  given  over  to  the  private  corporation ;  which 
thus  stands  between  the  public  and  the  use  of  money. 

These  corporations  are,  however,  organized  solely  for  the  profit 
of  their  owners;  and  hence  it  is  that  although  the  money  after 
its  issue  is  distributed  to  the  banks  at  a  nominal  rate  of  interest 
— usually  from  one-fourth  to  one-half  of  one  per  cent. — the  banks 
in  turn  charge  borrowers,  for  the  use  of  the  very  same  funds, 
rates  varying  from  six  to  ten  per  cent.,  and  even  higher;  prac- 
tically the  whole  charge  constituting  their  profit  for  the  mere  dis- 
tribution— a  tax  upon  the  labor  and  industry  of  the  people. 
But  the  banks  are  provided  for  the  care  and  distribution  of  pri- 
vate funds  as  well;  and  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  money  that 
passes  through  their  hands  belongs  to  depositors,  upon  which, 
as  a  rule,  they  pay  no  interest.  These  same  funds,  however,  they 
again  distribute  in  loans  and  discounts,  charging  the  same  rates 
as  before;  the  whole  charge  constituting,  again,  their  profit  for 
the  mere  distribution — an  enormous  and  perpetual  tax  upon  the 
labor  and  living  of  the  public. 

If,  then,  our  money  circulation  is  practically  free  of  interest 
when  it  passes  under  the  control  of  our  banking  institutions,  while 


A     REIGN    OF    CORRUPTION    AND    PLUNDER  19 

burdened  with  these  excessive  interest  charges,  when  distributed 
by  them  to  the  pubhc.  then  is  the  conclusion  unmistakable  that 
our  banking  system  is  responsible  for  our  present  exorbitant 
interest  rates  with  all  that  these  mean  to  industry  and  living. 

The  rates  charged  by  these  institutions  govern,  moreover, 
the  rates  for  private  loans  as  well;  and  practically  the  whole 
burden  of  usury  is  thus  at  their  doors.  Add  to  this  their  misuse 
of  their  position  and  power  in  bringing  about  industrial  crises  and 
panics,  through  the  withholding  of  the  money  supply  when  most 
needed,  but  to  further  the  aims  of  our  high-fmanciers;  and  the 
constant  failure  of  these  institutions  through  the  misconduct  and 
crimes  of  their  officials,  with  all  the  loss  and  ruin  this  involves 
not  only  to  depositors  and  stockholders  but  to  general  business 
as  well; — and  it  can  be  seen  how  enormous  must  be  the  fortunes 
amassed  by  these  means,  and  how  iniquitous  and  oppressive  is 
its  exercise  upon  the  labor  and  living  of  the  whole  of  industrial 
society. 

Yet  another  of  the  means  by  which  these  great  and  numerous 
fortunes  have  been  amassed,  is  through  the  exploitation  of  land. 

Land  is  the  most  general,  the  most  universal,  of  public  utili- 
ties. It  is  the  source  of  all  subsistence.  From  it  is  drawn,  or 
with  it  is  included,  the  air  we  breathe,  the  water  we  drink,  all 
food,  and,  indeed,  every  article  of  convenience  and  use.  Without 
land,  man  has  no  place,  nor  the  wherewithal,  to  live  or  toil.  The 
Son  of  Man,  a  wanderer  upon  the  face  of  the  earth,  but  voiced  the 
plaint  of  the  landless  in  every  age,  when  he  cried, — "The  foxes 
have  holes,  and  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests,  but  the  Son  of 
Man  hath  not  where  to  lay  his  head."  Hence  it  is,  and  because  of 
its  vital  use  and  necessity  to  society  and  to  its  every  citizen,  that 
when  it  is  permitted,  to  any,  to  seize  either  upon  the  soil  itself  or 
its  mineral  resources  for  the  purpose  of  withholding  these  from 
use,  thereby  to  extort  money,  whether  for  rent  or  purchase,  vast 
wealth  is  necessarily  amassed  therefrom. 

Especially  is  this  power  felt,  and  this  iniquitous  profit  realized, 
in  our  great  metropolitan  cities.  As  the  populations  of  these 
expand,  the  necessity  for  the  use  of  the  land  becomes  multiplied 
a  thousand  fold;  and  the  speculator  has  the  whole  population  in 
a  state  of  siege,  as  it  were,  and  is  in  a  position  to  extort  what 
terms  he  pleases;  and  his  terms  must  be  paid  or  industry  be  at 
a  standstill,  and  living  impossible.  Nor  is  this  tax  he  levies  a 
burden  upon  the  immediate  user  alone,  but  upon  the  population 
of  the  whole  country  as  well,  in  the  added  cost  of  all  supplies  and 
reduced  price  of  all  products  manufactured  or  distributed  in  or 
through  these  great  centers  of  industry  and  commerce. 

And  along  with  this  exploitation  of  the  land,  goes  also  the 
exploitation  of  all  the  timber,  and  minerals,  and  other  like  re- 
sources of  the  country. 


20  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

The  mines  of  the  world,  and  especially  of  the  precious  metals, 
or  those  in  universal  use  such  as  steel,  oil,  copper,  coal,  and  the 
like,  are  even  more  than  the  land  itself  limited  in  supply;  and 
when  these  are  in  the  possession  of  a  few  individuals,  possessing 
monopoly  powers,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  fortunes 
of  the  Rockefellers,  Carnegie,  Clark  of  Montana,  and  thousands 
of  others  scarcely  less  notorious,  are  to  be  traced  to  this  source. 
The  price  fixed  is  in  such  case  the  price  of  necessity;  the  public 
must  have  the  product,  and  must  expect  to  pay  the  price  asked. 
The  fortunes  of  the  owners  and  exploiters  of  the  mines  and  their 
resources,  alone  prove  how  extortionate  is  that  price;  how  great 
above  the  cost  of  production,  or  what  the  price  would  be  were 
this  exploitation  not  permitted. 

if,  now,  to  this  brief  survey  of  the  principal  means  by  which 
the  great  fortunes  of  the  world  have  been  amassed,  and  industrial 
society  despoiled  thereof,  we  add  the  further  fact  and  considera- 
tion that  these  great  accumulations  are  arbitrarily  continued 
from  generation  to  generation  in  the  families  and  descendants 
of  their  possessors,  by  our  institution  of  inheritance,  we  shall  have 
a  fairly  accurate  picture  of  the  whole  process  by  which  our  enor- 
mous and  iniquitous  wealth  concentration  during  the  last  half 
century  has  taken  place. 

But  whatever  the  particular  source  to  which  these  great  for- 
tunes, or  any  of  them,  may  be  traced,  the  one  word  describes  them 
all,  and  the  one  principle  runs  through  them  all.  Plunder  is  the 
magic  wand  that  has  called  all  these  great  fortunes  into  being; 
plunder  is  the  principle,  the  very  god  of  high-finance.  It  was  the 
more  effectually  to  accomplish  this  plunder  that  these  financiers 
corrupted  our  politics,  and  defrauded  the  public  of  franchises  and 
grants.  It  was  the  thirst  for  plunder  that  impelled  them,  by  every 
devious  method,  to  lure  investors  to  surrender  their  savings.  It 
was  the  instinct  of  plunder  that  prompted  them,  through  the 
agency  of  the  corporation,  to  seize  upon  every  avenue  of  labor 
and  of  living  the  more  surely  to  compel  the  whole  of  industrial 
society  to  yield  to  them  all  of  its  earnings  and  possessions. 

If  our  forefathers,  the  ablest  money-getters  among  them,  were 
compelled  to  toil  a  life-time  in  amassing  a  modest  million  or  two, 
this  was  but  because  they  had  not  yet  fully  grasped  the  possibili- 
ties of  high-finance.  Capitalism  was  still  in  its  infancy;  and  they 
had  not  yet  learned  the  secret  of  seizing  upon  some  utility,  or 
service,  or  commodity,  required  by  the  whole  community,  or  even 
by  the  whole  of  industrial  society;  and  compelling  every  citizen 
to  pay  any  price  they  chose  to  dictate,  governed  by  no  law  of 
competition,  nor  subject  to  any  check  save  inordinate  greed. 
And  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  Behold,  suddenly  rising  from  no- 
where, these  great  fortunes  shooting  up  like  weeds  of  the  field, 
and  spreading  over  the  face  of  the  whole  earth,  until  they  have 


A     REIGN    OF    CORRUPTION    AND    PLUNDER  21 

obscured  every  other  question  and  concern  in  life,  this  was  but 
because  our  financiers  suddenly  discovered — as  Mr.  Carnegie 
frankly  tells  us — that  "the  only  way  to  get  rich  is  to  command 
the  toil  of  others."  And  they  found  in  the  modern  corporation 
the  means  by  which  they  could  set  the  whole  of  industrial  society 
to  toil  for  them  on  terms  harder,  more  imperative,  and  altogether 
more  profitable,  than  those  imposed  by  the  taskmasters  of  old 
in  the  land  of  Egypt.     Can  we,  then,  ask: 

"Upon  what  meat  doth  this  our  Ceasar  feed, 
That  he  hath  grown  so  great?" 

Neither  are  we  left  in  doubt  as  to  the  source  from  whence 
these  fortunes  come.  According  to  the  reports  of  the  Dun  and 
Bradstreet  Mercantile  Agencies,  respectively,  the  cost  of  living 
has  increased  forty-five,  or  fifty-five,  per  cent,  within  nine  years; 
this  as  shown  by  the  records  of  capitalism,  the  conclusions 
of  cold,  unsympathetic  bookkeeping. 

These  figures  take  on  an  added  significance,  moreover,  when 
it  is  learned*  that  the  wages  of  labor,  so  far  from  showing  a  cor- 
responding increase,  actually  diminished  seven  dollars  per  work- 
ingman  in  all  manufacturing  occupations  during  the  decade  of 
1900;  while  the  average  wages  of  all  railway  employes  **  increased 
only  four  per  cent,  in  the  twelve  years  from  1892  to  1904 — or 
less  than  one-tenth  of  the  increase  in  the  cost  of  living.  On  the 
other  hand  we  findf  that  the  percentage  of  the  employed  had 
increased  from  about  one-third  of  our  population  in  1800  to  nearly 
two-fifths  in  1900;  the  wives  and  children  of  the  toilers  being 
forced  into  servitude  in  ever  increasing  numbers,  in  order  but 
to  be  able  to  live.  Truly,  we  serve  our  masters  well!  Never 
old  world  despot  demanded  of  his  subjects  so  much;  never 
dumb  ox  yielded  its  neck  more  patiently  to  the  yoke! 

Still  the  attorney  for  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  informs  usff 
that, — "the  reason  poverty  exists  is  because  nature  or  the  devil 
has  made  some  men  weak  and  imbecile,  and  others  lazy  and 
worthless;  and  neither  man  nor  God  can  do  much  for  one  who 
will  do  nothing  for  himself."  it  is  just  possible,  however,  that 
men  may  yet  outgrow  their  moral  laziness,  and  their  political 
imbecility,  and  decide  in  the  end  to  help  themselves. 

Nor  yet  have  we  seen  the  end.  The  conditions  now  so  op- 
pressive are  still  developing,  and  this  power  is  becoming  more 
absolute.  Occasionally,  indeed,  we  hear  of  strife  between  these 
high-financiers  themselves,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Northern  Securi- 
ties Company,  or  the  Equitable  Assurance  Society;    but  this  is 

*See  abstract  Twelfth  Census,  Page  300,  Table  153. 
♦♦Statistics  of  Railways  (Interstate  Commerce  Com.),  1901  and  1904. 
t Twelfth  Census.    Special  Report,  "Occupations."    CCXXXVII. 
tt  "The  Trust:  Its  Book,"  Page  72. 


22  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

only  the  conflict  between  robber  barons  to  determine  which 
among  them  shall  be  supreme  chief.  And  when  the  smoke 
of  battle  has  cleared  away,  we  can  surely  expect  to  see  a  single 
individual  in  control  of  each  field, — a  Morgan,  perhaps,  of  the 
so-called  "industrials,"  a  Harriman  or  Hill  of  railways,  a  Still- 
man  of  banks,  a  Ryan  of  insurance,  a  Belmont  of  municipal 
franchises,  and  so  on,  each  with  his  lieutenants  in  various  degrees; 
while  supreme  over  all  will  tower  the  one  giant  Mephistophelean 
figure,  labelled  "Standard  Oil,"  mother  of  this  brood  of  Horrors, 
master  absolute  of  the  labor,  the  liberty,  and  the  lives  of  a  whole 
nation. 

INDUSTRIAL   SOCIETY   SOLD    INTO    BONDAGE 

it  is  this  wide  and  painful  discrepancy  between  things  as  they 
should  be,  and  things  as  they  are;  it  is  this  increased  and  increas- 
ing toil,  and  poverty,  and  wretchedness,  falling  to  the  lot  of  men 
in  the  midst  of,  and  in  proportion  to,  the  skill  and  progress  which 
should  enrich  them,  that  is  at  the  root  of  the  social  and  industrial 
discontent  now  everywhere  prevalent.  This  discontent  is  seen, 
and  even  rises  into  menace,  in  labor  combinations  and  strikes; 
in  the  wide  spread  of  Socialism,  and  even  of  Nihilism;  in  the  mut- 
tered rage  and  hate  of  men  against  their  oppressors,  and  against 
law  itself,  which  they  are  coming  to  regard  as  their  foe;  in  riot, 
bloodshed,  and  the  assassin's  knife. 

Men  are,  and  ever  have  been,  slow  to  break  away  from  the 
old  order.  They  are  creatures  of  habit  and  custom;  and  are, 
withal,  so  absorbed  in  the  struggle  but  to  get  a  living,  that  it  is 
always  most  difficult  to  get  them  to  think  at  all  upon  these  sub- 
jects, and  next  to  impossible  to  bring  them  to  any  agreement  for 
change. 

But  the  grim  desperation  of  their  lot,  want,  and  starvation, 
are  compelling  them  at  last  to  think;  and  this  they  are  now  every- 
where doing  with  terrible  distinctness  and  energy.  They  are 
asking  themselves,  and  demanding  of  their  rulers  in  tones  of 
thunder  to  know,  where  the  vast  gains  of  their  progress  have 
gone;  and  why  when  they  accomplish  so  much,  and  create  wealth 
so  abundantly,  they  receive  so  little,  and  are  plunged  more  and 
more  into  the  depths  of  poverty  and  despair. 

There  is  a  growing  conviction  in  the  public  mind  that  these 
conditions  are  not  the  conditions  of  health.  Men  are  coming  to 
think  that  these  vast  aggregations  of  capital,  with  the  growing 
power  and  tyranny  they  exercise  over  the  industrial  world,  are 
an  evil  and  a  menace  to  society;  and  that  by  reason  of  them  we 
have  somehow  missed  the  real  fruitage  of  all  our  industry  and 
progress;  that,  unable  to  assimilate  these  its  achievements,  in- 
dustrial society  is  staggering  under  its  success  like  a  drunken 
man;   is  sick  with  a  surfeit  of  its  very  abundance. 


INDUSTRIAL    SOCIETY    SOLD    INTO    BONDAGE        23 

It  is  true  the  editor  of  "The  Trust:  Its  Book,"  in  a  burst  of 
enthusiasm,  tells  us*  that  the  trust  itself  is  "a  wholesome,  irre- 
sistible, natural  progression  from  the  lower  forms  of  industrial 
life  to  higher  ones;  it  is  a  phase  of  economic  evolution  having 
its  root  at  the  gate  of  Eden,  controlled  by  laws  as  regular  as  those 
which  mould  the  falling  raindrop."  While  the  General  Counsel 
of  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  rises  to  heights  of  the  most  pathetic 
eloquence,  and  warns  usf  that; — "To  stop  co-operation  of  indi- 
viduals and  aggregations  of  capital — by  trust  methods  of  course — 
would  be  to  arrest  the  wheels  of  progress,  to  stay  the  march  of 
civilization,  to  decree  immobility  of  intellect,  and  degradation  of 
humanity:  you  might  as  well  endeavor  to  stay  the  formation  of 
the  clouds,  the  falling  of  the  rains,  or  the  flowmg  of  the  streams, 
as  to  attempt  by  any  means,  or  in  any  manner,  to  prevent  the 
organization  of  industry,  association  of  persons,  and  aggregation 
of  capital,  to  any  extent  that  the  ever  growing  trade  of  the  world 
may  demand."  Truly  a  grave  and  awful  responsibility  rests 
upon  those  who  would  question  either  trust  methods,  or  trust 
hoards! 

Enormous  and  iniquitous  as  are  the  conditions  we  have  out- 
lined, with  all  their  glaring  inequalities  and  hardships,  they  will, 
however,  be  found  reducible  to  a  single  source  and  cause. 

When  invention  and  progress  made  it  necessary  for  men  to 
leave  their  individual  workshops  or  business,  and  combine  to- 
gether in  large  undertakings,  some  means  of  combination  must 
be  provided;  and  in  this  dilemma  we  had  recourse  to  the  modern 
corporation.  When,  moreover,  the  use  of  steam  locomotion,  as 
also  the  extension  of  our  population  over  an  ever  widening  area, 
called  for  some  means  01  transportation  beyond  the  primitive 
conveyances  of  our  forefathers,  we  had  recourse  again  to  the  cor- 
poration. So,  also,  when  the  growth  of  our  cities,  and  the  use 
of  street  railways,  gas,  and  electric  lighting,  water  supply,  and  the 
like,  called  for  some  united  action  in  the  community  in  order 
properly  to  provide  these  services,  we  had,  yet  again,  recourse 
to  the  corporation.  Or,  even  farther  back,  in  the  very  formation 
of  our  government,  when  the  needs  of  the  people  and  nation  made 
it  necessary  to  provide  not  only  for  the  issuance,  but  also  for  the 
proper  distribution  of  money,  alike  to  preserve  the  public  credit 
and  subserve  the  growing  demands  of  industry  and  commerce, 
we  had,  as  ever,  recourse  to  the  corporation.  Thus  were  the 
financial,  industrial,  and  public  service  corporations  enthroned 
and  established  as  an  integral  part  of  our  industrial,  social,  and 
political  systems. 

But  the  corporation,  in  its  various  aspects,  it  is  that  has  been 
chiefly  instrumental  in  bringing  about  the  conditions  we  have 

•"The  Trust:  Its  Book,"  Introduction. 
t"The  Trust:  Its  Book,"  Page  47.1 


34  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

outlined,  almost  in  their  entirety;  with  the  single  exception  of 
the  fortunes  acquired  by  land  speculation. 

By  means  of  our  railway,  telegraph,  and  other  like  public  ser- 
vice corporations,  these  enormous  fortunes  first  began  to  pile  up 
with  such  rapidity.  By  means  of  street  railway,  gas,  water,  elec- 
tric, and  telephone  corporations  in  all  our  cities,  the  growth  of 
yet  other  of  these  vast  fortunes  proceeded  apace.  By  means  of 
banks,  trust  companies,  insurance,  and  like  financial  corporations, 
other  of  these  fortunes  grew  to  their  present  enormous  bounds. 
By  means  of  manufacturing,  commercial,  mining,  and  other  in- 
dustrial corporations,  vast  and  innumerable  other  fortunes  began 
to  develop  early  in  our  history;  and  with  the  final  development 
of  these  into  the  trust,  mounted  to  their  present  colossal  propor- 
tions. 

There  may  have  been  a  few  large  fortunes  accumulated  with- 
out the  assistance  or  agency  of  the  corporation,  but  these  are 
infinitesimal  both  in  number  and  extent,  and  generally  will  be 
found,  indirectly  at  least,  to  owe  the  greater  portion  of  their 
growth  to  some  one  of  the  means  mentioned,  with,  as  before 
stated,  the  single  exception  of  those  amassed  from  land  specula- 
tion. And  even  with  regard  to  these  latter,  the  right  application 
of  the  corporate  principle  and  function  to  mines  and  mineral 
resources,  as  also  to  the  joint  use  and  occupancy  of  land  in  cities, 
would,  together  with  the  prohibition  of  non-occupant  ownership, 
have  deprived  the  land  question  itself  of  nine-tenths  of  its  enor- 
mity. 

The  corporation  as  at  present  constituted  is,  however,  itself 
but  the  creature  of  law,  and  natural  product  of  capitalism;  and 
resulted  from  the  seizure  by  capitalism  upon  the  machinery  of 
government,  even  as  it  already  controlled  the  machinery  of  pro- 
duction and  exchange. 

Given,  it  is  true,  the  selfish  principle  as  the  basis  of  the  com- 
petitive system — with  the  capitaHst  domination  of  industry,  and 
of  politics  as  well,  to  which  this  necessarily  led — and  it  was 
doubtless  inevitable  that  the  corporation  should  have  been 
adopted  in  its  present  form.  In  this  sense,  indeed,  we  may 
say  that  it  is  the  result  of  "natural  law."  But  equally  so,  then, 
can  it  be  said  that  the  tiger's  ferocity,  or  the  criminal's  propen- 
sity is  the  result  of  this  same  "natural  law."  Yet  we  destroy  the 
one  and  punish  the  other;  and  not  until  we  can  say  that  it  is 
man's  duty  to  submit  himself  to  the  tiger  or  the  criminal  can  it 
be  argued  that  "natural  law"  demands  of  him  to  submit  himself 
to  unjust  conditions  or  institutions. 

This  is,  indeed,  the  old  doctrine  of  "divine  right"  in  modern 
garb.  We  no  longer  believe  in  the  direct  intervention  of  Deity  in 
the  affairs  of  men;  but  believe  instead  that  Deity  works  by 
fixed  and  unchanging  laws.    This  change  in  the  beliefs  of  men 


INDUSTRIAL    SOCIETY    SOLD    INTO    BONDAGE         25 

has,  however,  necessitated  also  a  change  in  the  arguments  of 
those  who  would  exercise  rule  over  them.  It  would  little  awe 
men  to-day,  to  be  told  that  Deity  had  appointed  certain  of  their 
number  to  rule  over  them,  or  had  handed  down  certain  institu- 
tions which  they  must  obey.  But  now,  to  be  told  that  any  ques- 
tion of  our  institutions  is  but  to  set  ourselves  against  "natural 
law,"  awakens  the  nearest  resemblance  to  the  old  superstition 
of  which  mankind  are  at  present  capable.  Hence,  we  no  longer 
hear  of  "divine  right,"  but  instead  of  "natural  law,"  as  the  war- 
rant for  oppressive  institutions.  The  form  of  expression  has 
changed  to  suit  the  fashion  of  the  times;  the  superstition, 
and  the  fraud,  remain  the  same. 

There  is,  in  fact,  little  of  divinity  either  in  the  nature  or  the 
origin  of  the  corporation.  The  attorney  for  the  Standard  Oil 
Trust  is  himself  authority  for  the  statement  that  until  quite 
recently  the  corporation  was  looked  upon  as  little  short  of  crimi- 
nal. To  quote  his  own  words: — *"Less  than  half  a  century 
ago,  the  right  of  the  British  people  to  combine  for  trading  in  any 
manner,  except  as  partners,  was  denied;  and  the  issuing  of  a 
transferable  stock  without  special  legal  authority  was  an  illegal 
offence.  We  brought  our  laws  and  customs  upon  this  subject 
from  England,  and  until  within  a  verv  few  years,  in  most  of  the 
states  of  the  Union,  freedom  of  combmation  was  denied." 

Such  combination  was,  in  fact,  regarded  with  extreme  sus- 
picion by  the  laws  of  all  lands,  it  was  only  allowed  for  certain 
purposes,  and  even  then  a  limit  was  placed  upon  both  the  number 
of  men  and  amount  of  capital  that  could  so  unite.  There  was 
a  well  grounded  suspicion  that  the  combining  together  in  such 
manner  of  men  and  capital,  placed  not  only  competitors  but  the 
public  at  a  disadvantage,  and  was  dangerous.  The  sturdy 
Anglo-Saxon  sense  of  our  ancestors  revolted  at  the  idea  of  this 
artificial  creature  of  law,  consisting  of  an  unlimited  number  of 
men  and  amount  of  capital  controlled  by  a  single  head,  being 
turned  loose  in  a  competitive  and  warring  system,  to  war  upon 
and  inevitably  crush  out  all  individual  effort. 

And  if  this  prejudice  has  been  everywhere  ignored,  this  was 
but  because  our  financiers  saw  not  only  the  necessity  of  combi- 
nation to  modern  business  enterprise,  but  also  the  precise  form 
in  which  combination  would  most  contribute  to  their  own 
profit. 

The  corporation  has  been,  from  the  first,  the  creature  of 
stock-jobbing,  bribery,  and  every  species  of  corruption.  Our 
financiers  had  their  lobbyists  in  our  halls  of  legislation,  and  spent 
of  their  money  freely  in  order  to  procure  both  just  such  laws  as 
they  desired,  and  such  special  privileges  and  franchises  as  the 
people  had  to  give.     The  Credit  Mobilier  and  Star  Route  scandals 

•"  Trusts,"  S.  C.  T.  Dodd,  1900,  Page  37. 


26  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

uncovered  early  in  our  railroad  building  just  the  methods  that 
were  resorted  to;  and  the  railway  historian  informs  us*  that  this 
condition  was  only  "typical"  of  all  our  railway  legislation.  Each 
day  additional  light  is  being  thrown  upon  the  corruption  of  our 
municipal,  state,  and  national  politics,  oy  the  corporations;  until 
it  must  seem,  to  even  the  casual  reader,  that  Chaos  himself, 
rather  than  "natural  law",  has  been  instrumental  in  shaping  our 
corporation  laws. 

The  history  of  our  corporation  legislation  has  been,  in  fact, 
the  blackest  page,  not  only  of  our  politics,  but  in  our  record  of 
crime  itself;  and  had  every  petty  offender  against  the  peace  of 
society,  been  as  successful  as  these  other  arch  offenders,  and  like 
them  amassed  large  fortunes,  and  gone  "unwhipt  of  justice," 
we  should  doubtless  now  find  them  also  gravely  defending  their 
practices,  upon  the  ground  that  burglary,  sneak-thievery,  pocket- 
picking,  and  every  other  species  of  common  cut-throatism,  are 
controlled  by  "laws  as  inevitable  as  those  which  mould  the  falling 
raindrop."  Such  is  the  inconsistency  of  human  nature;  or, 
rather,  such  is  its  preverse  consistency  to  see  things  in  the  pre- 
cise light  that  justifies  its  own  selfish  ends. 

That  the  tendency  of  industrialism  has  been  toward  combina- 
tion, may  well  be  admitted. 

The  mtroduction  of  machinery  has,  as  we  have  seen,  neces- 
sitated men  working  together  rather  than  separately;  while 
improved  means  of  transportation  carries  this  co-operation 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  industrial  world.  And  this  change 
in  the  industrial  order  has  brought  about  the  increased  depend- 
ence of  men  upon  each  other.  Thousands  of  toilers  now  work 
side  by  side  in  the  world's  great  factories  and  mills,  to  satisfy 
a  world-wide  demand;  thus  replacing  the  old  idea  of  competi- 
tion with  that  of  the  combination  of  human  effort — or  co-opera- 
tion. 

This  industrial  movement  itself  is,  indeed,  inexorable;  and 
may  not  be  changed.  But  it  by  no  means  follows  that  the  laws 
ana  institutions,  with  which  we  have  met  these  conditions,  have 
any  such  quality.  The  "Industrial  movement,"  so  called,  is 
one  thing,  and  the  human  laws  or  institutions,  with  which  we 
have  accommodated  ourselves  to  that  movement,  are  quite  an- 
other and  different  thing.  These  may  be  right,  or  they  may  be 
wrong. 

Nor  does  the  mere  fact  that  we  have  adopted  certain  laws 
and  institutions  raise  any  presumption  in  their  favor;  for  under 
human  institutions,  oppression,  cruelty,  injustice,  and  wrong 
of  every  kind  have  ever  sheltered;  and  it  is  only  as  nations  have 
from  time  to  time  reformed  their  laws,  and  righted  the  abuses 
which  have  sprung  up  in  human  affairs,  that  they  have  at  all  pro- 

*Hudson  on  Railways.     Page  448. 


THE    MODERN    CORPORATION    A     MONSTROSITY        27 

gressed,  or  even  continued  to  exist.  And  if  the  very  mistakes  and 
misconduct,  which  have  brought  about  oppression  and  wrong, 
can  be  said  to  be  the  result  of  natural  law,  much  more,  then,  the 
moral  yearnings,  the  enlightened  self  interest,  the  knowledge 
gleaned  from  bitter  experience,  which  have  enabled  men  to  free 
themselves  from  that  oppression,  and  right  those  wrongs,  are  in 
the  truest  sense  the  result  of  natural  law;  and  constitute,  in  fact, 
the  saving  principle  of  all  social  and  political  systems. 

THE    MODERN   CORPORATION   A  MONSTROSITY 

We  might,  indeed,  wish  to  think  that  our  corporation  laws 
proceeded  from  the  loftiest  motives  of  patriotism,  and  are  the 
highest  product  of  human  wisdom.  But  we  have  seen  what  in- 
fluences went  to  their  enactment;  and  it  will  be  necessary  to 
inquire  into  their  adaptation  to  present  industrial  conditions, 
before  we  can  form  any  judgment  as  to  their  wisdom. 

Before  the  day  of  machinery,  industry  was  truly  competi- 
tive; the  law  of  competition,  which  had  long  been  the  boast  ot  our 
economic  system,  was  in  full  force  and  operation. 

The  farmer  raised  his  own  food  products,  and  the  wool,  and 
hides,  and  other  material  for  his  clothing  and  footwear.  He 
usually  reared  his  own  dwelling,  constructed  his  own  furniture, 
and  his  farming  implements,  in  part,  as  well.  He  was  his  own 
butcher,  and  often  his  own  tanner;  while  his  good  housewife 
spun  and  wove  the  material,  and  made  the  clothing  and  linen 
for  his  household.  The  family  was  thus  largely  self-dependent, 
and  self-sustaining.  Or,  if  he  required  groceries,  hardware,  drugs, 
implements,  and  the  like,  he  traded  for  these  with  the  merchants 
of  the  village;  and  the  village  blacksmith,  carpenter,  and  shoe- 
maker, as  well  as  other  artisans,  were  each  glad  to  furnish  him 
their  services  as  required.  But  whether  he  sold  his  products,  or 
bartered  them  for  such  supplies  and  services,  he  was  assured  fair 
and  equal  terms. 

The  farmers  were  then,  as  now,  too  numerous,  and  too  depen- 
dent upon  the  sale  of  their  products,  to  enter  into  any  agreement 
to  withhold  these  from  the  market;  or  otherwise  attempt  to  get 
an  extortionate  price.  But  if  they  entered  into  no  conspiracy 
to  defeat  competition,  neither  were  they  the  victims  of  any  such 
conspiracy.  They  found  no  elevators,  packing-houses,  nor  trans- 
portation systems,  to  strip  them  of  all  their  profits  on  their  way 
to  the  market.  Much  less  were  there  in  those  days  boards  of 
trade,  or  speculators,  trying  to  "corner"  the  wheat,  corn,  or  other 
food  supply  of  the  nation;  in  order  to  dictate  prices  both  to  the 
farmers  and  to  all  consumers  throughout  the  civilized  world. 
Nor  yet  were  there  great  corporations,  or  trusts,  controlling  the 
oil,  coal,  sugar,  and  the  hundreds  of  other  products  of  industry 


28  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

and  manufacture,  which  give  employment  to  the  world's  toilers, 
and  go  to  make  up  the  living  of  every  citizen. 

This,  true  of  the  farmer,  was  equally  true  of  the  merchant 
and  artisan  of  the  village.  There  was  usually  more  than  one 
merchant  in  the  village,  each  anxious  to  hold  the  trade  of  his 
customers;  or  if  there  was  but  one,  he  was  still  in  competition 
with  the  merchants  of  the  nearby  town,  and  could  not  afford  to 
be  exorbitant  in  his  dealings.  So  also  of  the  carpenters,  and  black- 
smiths, and  other  artisans  of  the  village;  they  were  all  competing 
with  each  other,  as  well  as  with  their  fellow  craftsmen  in  the  larger 
towns,  and  would  give  their  services  for  a  reasonable  compensa- 
tion. 

Labor,  too,  found  at  that  time  the  widest  possible  market  for 
its  commodity.  Whether  upon  the  farm,  in  the  store,  or  in  the 
shop,  employers  were  numerous;  and  fair  wages,  to  satisfy  the 
simple  wants  of  the  time,  assured. 

The  wage  earner  was  considered  the  equal  of  his  employer; 
and  if  efficient  was  often  taken  into  partnership;  or  perhaps 
looked  forward  to  setting  up  in  business  for  himself.  The  posi- 
tion was  usually  filled  by  young  men  on  their  way  to  independ- 
ence; and  no  young  man  could  feel  it  mean  or  degrading  to  fill 
positions  his  employer  had  filled  before  him ;  and  which  had  been 
filled  by  a  Benjamin  Franklin,  an  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  others 
of  the  greatest  names  in  American  history,  in  mounting  the  lad- 
der of  wealth  or  fame.  This  it  was  that  constituted  the  dignity 
of  labor;  and  the  spirit  of  equality  and  freedom  it  engendered, 
constituted  the  greatness  of  our  national  character,  and  the  hope 
of  posterity.  The  employers  were  not  then,  as  now,  vast  cor- 
porations controlled  by  multi-millionaires,  in  whose  considera- 
tion their  employees  are  rated  but  as  cattle,  at  their  commercial 
value;  to  be  dispensed  with  as  unceremoniously  when  their  ser- 
vices are  no  longer  needed.  The  old  relation  was  a  personal, 
as  well  as  a  competitive  one;  and  was  inspired  by  mutual  regard, 
as  well  as  by  mutual  interest,  between  employer  and  employed. 

Those  were,  in  truth,  the  days  of  the  Democracy  of  man,  the 
Republicanism  of  society;  when  men  were  free  and  equal,  indus- 
trially as  well  as  politically;  and  before  man  had  sunk  below  the 
dollar,  the  mere  servant  of  corporate  wealth,  under  whose  crush- 
ing weight  he  can  scarce  hope  even  to  exist,  much  less  to  rise. 

Those  were,  it  is  true,  days  of  hard  and  strenuous  labor,  for 
the  tools  and  implements  were  of  the  rudest,  whether  in  agricul- 
ture or  manufacture.  Yet  even  before  machinery  had  come  to 
do  their  work,  and  when  men  were  far  away  from  the  markets, 
and  were  conquering  the  wilderness,  contending  both  with  the 
savage  and  beasts  of  prey,  those  were,  nevertheless,  the  days 
when  our  national  greatness  was  born.  These  hardy  and  self- 
respecting  pioneers,  by  their  very  conflict  with  the  outer  world. 


THE    MODERN    CORPORATION    A     MONSTROSITY        29 

as  well  as  by  matching  their  strength  with  each  other  in  a  free 
and  equal  struggle,  were  the  fit  material  out  of  which  a  nation 
destined  for  greatness  could  alone  be  built.  The  incentive  to 
provide  a  home  and  sustenance  for  his  family,  and  to  take  his 
place  in  the  same  rank  with  his  neighbors,  inspired  in  every  breast, 
whether  in  country  or  village,  the  desire  to  bring  out  the  best  eflFort 
in  each.  And  the  prospect  that  lay  before  every  youth  to  rise  in 
the  counsels  and  guidance  of  the  nation,  inspired  the  more  ambi- 
tious to  still  more  strenuous  exertion. 

We  have,  in  fact,  but  to  read  the  lives  of  such  men  as  Lincoln, 
and  Garfield,  and  Webster,  and  Franklin,  and  hundreds  of  others, 
to  see  the  hope,  and  the  possibilities,  that  lay  in  those  lives  of 
humble  toil,  it  is  true,  but  of  free  and  independent  toil  as  well. 

But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  competitive  system,  its 
advantages,  or  disadvantages,  certain  it  is  that  it  has  long  since 
passed   away. 

With  the  coming  of  machinery,  the  artisan  must  leave  his  shop 
and  independent  toil,  and  join  his  labor  with  thousands  of  other 
workmen  in  the  world's  great  factories  and  mills.  He  could  not 
hope,  with  the  old  simple  processes,  to  compete  with  mechanical 
production.  On  the  other  hand,  the  machinery  and  buildings 
required  were  too  expensive,  and  the  capital  too  great,  for  him 
to  remain  his  own  master  under  these  new  conditions.  Hence, 
by  the  very  genius  of  this  industrial  movement,  the  toilers  of  the 
world— their  occupation  and  old-time  importance  gone — were 
left  no  choice  but  to  seek  employment  with  the  large  corporations, 
in  the  world's  great  factories,  mines,  mills,  packing  houses,  de- 
partment stores,  and  the  like;  or  it  may  be  with  our  railway  and 
other  public  service  corporations.  Organization  and  combination 
were  thus  everywhere  the  order  of  the  day;  division  of  labor  and 
co-operation  ot  effort  was  carried  to  its  utmost  limit. 

To  say  that  a  movement  so  vast,  and  a  revolution  so  com- 
plete, has  been  due  to  corporate  or  other  governmental  inter- 
ference, is  wholly  to  mistake  its  nature  and  character;  and  but 
to  resemble  the  fly  in  Esop,  which,  sitting  on  the  chariot  wheel, 
said  in  self-gratulation,  "See  what  a  dust  1  raise!" 

It  was  brought  about,  instead,  by  the  progress  of  invention 
applied  to  industry,  and  especially  to  transportation.  It  was, 
in  short,  a  natural  and  inevitable  growth,  due  to  the  progress  of 
human  thought  and  achievement.  And  so  far  from  contributing 
toward  that  movement,  the  private  corporation,  by  diverting 
and  corrupting  the  channels  of  that  progress  to  serve  private 
ends,  has  been  the  one  means  most  instrumental  in  retarding 
that  industrial  evolution,  and  converting  what  should  have  been 
our  chiefest  blessing  into  our  greatest  curse.  It  has  engendered 
a  strife  and  warfare  between  individuals  and  classes,  that  is  akin 
to  sickness  and  fever  in  the  human  organism;    and  which  is  no 


30  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

more  necessary  to  our  industrial  progress  and  development,  or 
a  part  thereof,  than  spinal  meningitis  is  a  necessary  part  of  child- 
hood's growth,  or  the  microbes,  which  are  supposed  to  get  into 
our  food,  are  any  part  or  parcel  of  the  sustenance  we  receive  from 
that  food. 

The  corporation  was,  in  fact,  opposed  to  the  whole  nature  and 
genius  of  the  industrial  movement ;  and  could  not  have  been  other 
than  injurious  in  its  effects. 

The  nature  of  the  industrial  movement  was  co-operative  in 
the  truest  sense.  When  the  workmen  no  longer  toiled  each  in 
his  separate  shop,  but  all  united  in  one  large  factory,  or  other 
corporate  undertaking,  then  they  were  no  longer  engaged  in  com- 
peting with  one  another;  but  were  instead  co-operating  their 
efforts  toward  one  common  result,  for  the  equal  benefit  of  all  con- 
cerned. Moreover,  the  improved  means  of  transportation  ex- 
tended this  co-operation  throughout  the  whole  body  of  society. 
The  food  and  other  products  from  the  prairies  of  the  west  supply 
the  table  and  clothing  of  the  residents  of  our  cities,  and  even  of 
the  world;  while  the  cotton  and  woolen  goods,  the  clothing,  the 
shoes,  the  hardware,  the  furniture,  and  other  articles  of  manu- 
facture, which  come  from  our  manufacturing  centers,  go  not  only 
to  every  farm  and  village  throughout  the  land,  but  find  a  market 
world-wide.  And  this  same  process  of  exchange  is  carried  on 
for  all  products  of  agriculture,  of  manufacture,  and  of  commerce; 
until,  by  means  of  our  great  railway  systems  and  steamship  lines, 
the  most  distant  parts  of  the  globe  are  little  farther  apart  to-day 
for  all  purposes  of  industry  and  commerce,  than  neighboring  cities 
were  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago.  Thus  in  this  age  of  in- 
dustrial progress  has  been  built  up  an  harmonious  industrial 
organism;  in  which  each  part,  or  individual,  labors  together  with 
every  other  part,  or  individual,  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  mutual 
and  varied  wants  of  all,  in  one  vast  co-operative  system. 

But  if  society  has  thus  become  co-operative,  then  it  were  neces- 
sary that  our  institutions  should  correspond. 

Life  itself  is  but  the  adaptation,  whether  of  plant  or  ani- 
mal, to  its  environment.  Should  either  the  individual  or  species 
fail  at  any  time  to  adapt  itself  to  the  conditions  in  which  it  is 
placed,  then  it  must  necessarily  become  extinct.  Even  so  of 
men  in  societies;  should  any  people  fail  to  conform  their  institu- 
tions to  the  conditions  in  which  they  are  placed,  or  to  which  they 
may  have  grown,  then  there  is  a  lack  of  adjustment,  or  disturbance; 
and  disease,  or  even  death,  must  ensue,  unless  the  evils  are  rem- 
edied. And  to  this  end,  government  is  but  the  intelligence  of  col- 
lective society,  adapting  its  relations  and  institutions  to  its  en- 
vironment. The  same  institutions  could  not,  therefore,  be  adapted 
to  conditions  so  totally  dissimilar  as  the  old  competitive  system, 
and  the  present  co-operative  one;  and  we  were  under  the  necessity 


THE    MODERN    CORPORATION    A    MONSTROSITY       31 

of  making  some  change  in  our  institutions,  as  we  emerged  from 
the  old  condition  into  the  new.  Not  to  have  done  so  would  have 
stifled  the  new  industrial  movement  in  its  very  inception. 

The  changes  made  were,  however,  altogether  curious.  Gd- 
operation  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  governing  principle  of  the 
new  industrial  movement;  and  some  means  of  combination  must 
be  provided.  But  competition  and  warfare  had  become,  as  it 
were,  second  nature  to  us;  while  anything  like  real  co-operation 
was  regarded  as  socialistic,  or  even  anarchistic. 

Hence  it  was  that  when  our  financiers  saw  the  opportunity 
to  turn  these  new  industrial  changes  to  their  own  advantage;  and 
our  politicians,  influenced  by  the  golden  arguments  which  these 
financiers  knew  so  well  how  to  use  from  the  beginning,  resur- 
rected for  their  benefit  that  same  hated  and  feared  corporation, 
they  found  the  public  an  easy  prey  to  the  conspiracy.  Unable 
longer  to  hold  to  the  competition  of  individual  with  individual, 
and  yet  unwilling  to  exchange  this  for  real  co-operation  for  the 
benefit  of  all,  we  accepted  what  seemed  to  be  a  compromise  in 
the  modern  corporation.  We  placed  this  in  control  of  industry, 
and  of  all  public  utilities,  and  provided  for  its  unlimited  extension 
to  embrace  any  number  of  men,  or  amount  of  capital,  and  to  cover 
any  field;  thereby  enabling  it  to  secure  an  absolute  monopoly 
of  all  industry,  as  well  as  of  all  public  services,  with  the  power  to 
dictate  terms  to  the  whole  of  society. 

Thus  fostered,  the  once  hated  and  feared  corporation  has 
taken  possession  of  the  industrial  world;  built  up  for  its  owners 
in  the  space  of  little  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  from  noth- 
ing, the  most  colossal  fortunes  the  world  has  ever  seen;  and,  in 
so  doing,  has  impoverished  the  world  of  toil,  at  the  very  time  when 
mechanical  progress  had  enormously  enriched  the  whole  nation. 
It  has,  too,  corrupted  our  politics,  until  they  are  a  stench  in  the 
nostrils  of  a  whole  people;  and  a  byword  among  nations,  sapping 
the  very  foundations  of  public,  and,  with  it,  of  private  morality. 
It  has  built  up  an  aristocracy  of  wealth,  having  no  pursuit  but 
dissipation;  a  plutocracy  of  power,  having  no  god  but  greed; 
and  converted  into  mere  beasts  of  burden,  and  slaves  of  toil,  a 
people  once  free,  and  the  hope  of  mankind. 

The  corporation  as  at  present  constituted  is,  in  fact,  a  mon- 
strosity from  whatever  standpoint  considered.  It  belongs  neither 
to  the  competitive  system,  from  which  we  have  emerged,  nor  yet 
to  the  co-operative  system,  toward  which  we  are  tending. 

A  competitive  system  presupposes  a  free  competition  of  equal 
with  equal;  of  individual  with  individual.  In  the  brute  world 
each  individual  stands  upon  its  own  merits;  and  must  depend 
upon  its  own  strength,  or  cunning,  or  fleetness,  both  to  preserve 
its  life  and  to  destroy  its  enemies.  Hence,  in  this  struggle,  the 
stronger  and  more  capable  survive,  while  the  weaker,  or  less  capa- 


32  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

ble,  must  perish.  This  is  the  "Struggle  for  existence,  and  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,"  which  is  claimed  to  justify  our  competitive 
system.  It  is  admitted  that  the  warfare  is  a  cruel  one;  but  it  is 
pointed  out  that  this  is  a  wise  provision  of  an  all-wise  Providence; 
that  this  struggle  develops  the  strong  and  destroys  the  weak,  and 
thus  perpetuates  only  the  stronger  and  more  capable.  This  same 
struggle  and  warfare  has  moreover,  it  is  said,  obtained  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  human  society;  the  stronger  tribes  and  nations 
having  warred  upon  and  exterminated  the  weaker  ones,  thus  de- 
veloping the  strength  of  the  victors,  and  destroying  the  van- 
quished. Hence,  it  is  contended  that  only  by  such  struggle  and 
warfare  can  the  development  of  industrial  society  be  attained. 
This  argument  is  not  without  its  plausible  aspects;  and  if  the 
development  of  brute  strength  and  brute  instincts  be  indeed  the 
true  aim  of  human  institutions,  it  might  be  accepted  as  final. 

But  if  a  warfare  and  strife,  which  must  mean  death  to  so  many, 
is  to  be  the  order  of  the  day,  then  must  this  struggle  be  kept  free 
and  equal  with  men,  as  it  is  with  brutes, — a  conflict  of  individual 
with  individual  alone. 

The  corporation,  however,  permits  the  combining  of  any  num- 
ber of  individuals  and  capitals,  all  acting  as  one.  To  ask  the  in- 
dividual to  compete  with  this,  is  as  though  we  should  ask  him  to 
contend  single-handed  against  an  organized  band,  or  even  against 
an  entire  nation;  and  individual  effort  must  everywhere  expect 
to  go  to  the  wall.  It  is  true  the  competitors  menaced  by  it,  may, 
in  turn,  unite  into  other  corporations;  but  this  struggle  or  war- 
fare becomes  then  one  of  corporation  with  corporation,  and  the 
old  competition  of  individual  with  individual  is  as  surely  at  an 
end.  This  has  been  the  condition  of  industrial  society  ever  since 
the  introduction  of  the  corporation;  and,  as  the  corporation  per- 
mits of  indefinite  extension,  it  was  but  to  be  expected  that  these 
combinations  should  in  the  end  cease  to  war  upon  each  other, 
and  combine,  as  in  the  trust,  to  war  upon  the  whole  of  society. 

Hence  the  corporation,  which  we  thus  created  and  turned  loose 
to  war  upon  the  individual,  has  all  but  completed  its  conquest; 
and  individual  effort  has  everywhere  gone  to  the  wall,  crushed 
beneath  the  gigantic  power  of  this  mere  creature  of  the  law.  We 
have  "sown  the  wind,"  and  now  "reap  the  whirlwind." 

And  if  this  be  true  of  the  industrial  corporation,  much  more 
does  it  hold  true  of  the  corporation  in  control  of  public  services — 
or  public  utilities — such  as  money,  railways,  telegraphs,  tele- 
phones, gas  and  electric  lighting,  and  the  like.  In  addition  to 
the  advantages  possessed  by  the  industrial  corporation  from  its 
colossal  size,  these  have  the  further  advantage  of  being  placed 
in  control  of  natural  monopolies,  with  the  power  to  dictate  their 
own  terms  to  the  world  of  labor,  as  well  as  to  the  public  at  large. 
Such  advantage,  and  such  power,  is  wholly  foreign  to  the  idea  and 


THE    MODERN    CORPORATION    A     MONSTROSITY        2>i 

nature  of  the  competitive  system;  and  cannot  but  result  in  oppres- 
sion and  cruelty. 

But  if  the  corporation,  as  now  organized,  has  thus  no  place  in 
the  competitive  system,  much  less  can  it  be  said  to  have  any  place 
in  a  co-operative  system. 

Co-operation  signifies  the  working  together  in  a  spirit  of  unity, 
a  real  partnership  of  all  concerned;  and  this  the  corporation 
is  the  farthest  possible  from  securing.  Co-operation,  in  any 
true  sense,  would  give  to  every  competitor  supplanted  by  the 
corporation,  the  same  share  in  the  jomt  enterprise  as  he  before 
possessed  under  competition.  It  would  give  to  labor,  driven  from 
its  old  independence,  a  partner's  share  and  freedom  in  the  new 
combination.  It  would,  moreover,  admit  the  public  to  share  in 
its  benefits,  by  providing  in  some  suitable  manner  for  just  and 
reasonable  prices,  before  assured  by  the  principle  of  competition. 

Under  the  competitive  system,  each  competitor  was  upon 
terms  of  equality  with  every  other  competitor;  one  might  per- 
haps amass  more  wealth  than  another,  but  they  were  none  the 
the  less  equals;  while  labor  was  free  to  choose  its  own  employer, 
and  the  public  to  accept  or  reject  the  terms  offered.  When, 
then,  co-operation  succeeded  to  competition,  each  had  the  right 
to  expect  the  same  equality,  freedom  from  dictation,  and  just 
interest  in  the  result  of  their  common  labor,  under  combina- 
tion, which  he  had  before  enjoyed  without  the  combination. 

This  free  and  equal  co-operation,  however,  the  corporation 
made  no  attempt  to  secure. 

Certainly  the  individual  competitor,  driven  by  it  from  the 
field,  has  no  share  in  its  benefits  any  more  than  the  victim  of  a 
robber  has  a  share  in  that  robber's  plunder;  while  the  wage 
earner  in  its  employ  is  no  more  a  partner  of  its  proud  owners 
than  is  the  lackey  of  some  great  lord  a  partner  in  his  lordship's 
estate.  And  the  public,  whether  as  producers  or  consumers, 
can  only  be  considered  the  victims,  and  never  the  partners  of 
the  corporation.  The  competitor  was  forced  from  the  field  by 
its  overwhelming  size  and  power,  and  the  laborer,  the  producer, 
and  consumer — comprising  practically  the  whole  body  of  society 
— were  compelled  to  deal  with  the  corporation  alone;  without 
the  benefits  of  competition,  upon  which  each  had  before  depended 
for  just  and  reasonable  terms. 

The  corporation  has  thus  been  made  the  creature  of  private 
interests,  the  property  of  the  few.  For  the  many,  whose  efforts 
it  has  supplanted,  and  absorbed,  it  has  nothing  but  a  servant's 
stipend  and  portion  to  ofl'er.  No  part  have  they,  either  in  the 
corporation  or  in  its  culmination  the  trust,  now  in  control  of  the 
varied  fields  of  industry  and  of  public  service;  no  portion  have 
they  in  the  products  and  results  of  human  labor  and  effort,  before 
the  free  and  equal  heritage  of  all. 


34  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

The  farmer  may,  it  is  true,  still  own  his  farm,  the  mechanic 
his  shop,  or  the  tradesman  his  store;  but  the  corporation  controls 
the  prices  of  all  their  products  and  supplies,  through  transporta- 
tion, packing  houses,  elevators,  mills,  boards  of  trade,  stock  ex- 
changes, and  the  like,  just  as  surely  as  it  controls  the  wages  of 
the  laborer  in  its  employ,  or  the  products  of  the  trust  itself. 

When  the  farmer's  products  are  ready  for  shipment,  the  rail- 
ways dictate  the  price  of  shipment,  and  strip  him  of  all  his  profits. 
And  when  these  products  reach  the  city,  the  elevators,  packing 
houses,  boards  of  trade,  and  other  corporations,  control  the  prices 
there,  and  demand  their  full  quota  of  what  remains  to  him;  until 
though  nominally  independent,  the  profits  of  his  toil  go  as  surely 
to  these  corporate  masters  as  though  he  were  a  wage  earner  in 
their  employ.  But  more  especially  are  all  the  supplies  of  life, 
of  every  sort,  at  the  mercy  of  corporate  greed,  with  the  power  to 
fix  the  price  of  living  of  every  member  of  society,  even  as  it  has 
already  fixed  the  wages  and  returns  to  labor  and  production. 
With  the  advent  of  the  mere  corporation  in  the  field  of  industry 
the  circle  of  competition  was  narrowed,  and  with  the  develop- 
ment of  this  into  the  trust,  altogether  destroyed;  while  in  the 
field  of  public  service  this  end  was  as  surely  attained  almost  from 
the  beginning,  with  the  very  placing  of  these  under  private  cor- 
porate control. 

The  corporation  thus  introduced  a  third  and  anomalous  con- 
dition into  our  social  system.  Competition  it  doomed,  and  co- 
operation it  refused;  but  it  brought  about  a  system  of  corporate 
control  and  exploitation  alike  of  industry  and  all  public  services, 
and  gave  rise  to  a  new  social  doctrine  in  which  this  is  lauded  as 
the  necessary  and  proper  state  of  industrial  society. 

This  brings  about  a  certain  kind  of  co-operation  indeed;  but 
it  is  a  co-operation  of  the  few,  for  the  purpose  of  driving  all  com- 
petitors from  business,  and  dictating  the  terms  of  necessity  to 
the  whole  of  society.  The  corporation,  even  in  its  simpler  form, 
has  long  been  the  god  of  the  industrial  world;  and  now,  in  the 
trusts  and  other  combinations,  an  infinitely  small  number  of 
great  capitalists  control  the  entire  field  of  industry,  determining 
practically  the  wages  of  labor,  the  prices  of  all  the  products  of 
labor  and  supplies  of  life,  the  rates  of  interest  upon  money,  and 
the  charge  for  all  public  services  of  every  kind  and  description. 

Thus  have  we  by  means  of  the  corporation  brought  about  a 
state  of  subjection  and  inequality  not  surpassed  in  the  history 
of  the  world;  diverting  at  once,  and  by  the  same  process,  all  our 
enormous  wealth  production,  and  all  the  savings  of  past  genera- 
tions as  well,  into  the  overswelling  coffers  of  the  industrial  mas- 
ters of  society.  And  now  that  this  result  has  been  triumphantly 
accomplisheci,  and  the  power  and  possessions  of  the  corporation 
fully  established,  and  by  our  own  act,  we  have,  forsooth,  preached 


CORPORATION   SHOULD   BE   SOCIAL,    CO-OPERATIVE   35 

to  US  that  this  condition  is  inevitable,  and  therefore  right;  and 
that  any  question  of  it,  is  but  to  set  ourselves  against  "natural 
law."  Meanwhile,  great  as  are  their  fortunes,  and  absolute  as 
is  their  power,  these  lords  of  the  industrial  world  are  yet  vieing 
with  each  other  in  a  death  grapple  for  more  wealth;  until  what 
with  their  power  to  command  all  the  services  of  industrial  society, 
every  former  despotism  will  have  been  insignificant  by  comparison. 

THE  CORPORATION  SHOULD  BE  SOCIAL. 
CO-OPERATIVE 

But  if  present  industrial  and  social  conditions  are  the  result 
alone  of  human  institutions;  and  if  the  false  and  vicious  notion 
that  man's  natural  state  is  one  of  warfare  and  hatred,  is  alone  re- 
sponsible therefor;  then  these  institutions  and  conditions  can 
claim  no  warrant  or  justification  for  their  continued  existence. 
And  if  government  is  but  the  intelligence  of  collective  society,  and 
must  ever  act  in  adapting  its  institutions  to  industrial  and  other 
conditions, — then  what  task  so  fit  for  it  now  to  perform  as  to 
remedy  the  error  it  has  committed,  and  properly  conform  our  in- 
stitutions to  present  industrial  society. 

If  industrial  society  is  co-operative  in  its  nature,  then  should 
our  institutions  be  also  co-operative. 

The  corporation  should  never  have  been  created  at  all,  or  should 
have  provided  for  the  real  co-operation  of  all  the  interests  sup- 
planted by  it,  labor  as  well  as  capital,  instead  of  being  made  the 
creature  of  capital  alone.  But,  above  all,  the  public  nature  of 
this  mere  creature  of  law  should  never  have  been  lost  sight  of,  and 
it  should  have  ever  been,  and  remained,  under  public  supervision 
and  control;  this  to  protect  alike  labor,  investors,  and  the  public, 
and  prevent  its  exploitation  in  the  interests  of  private  greed. 

If  capital  desired  to  enter  upon  individual  or  partnership  under- 
takings, it  could  have  done  so.  But  when  the  aid  of  the  law  was 
invoked,  as  by  the  corporation,  then  the  law  had  the  right  to  pre- 
scribe the  exact  and  absolute  terms  upon  which  the  combination 
should  take  place.  And  these  terms  should  have  conformed  to 
the  nature  and  requirements  of  existing  society,  and  not  to  old 
and  outgrown  dogmas.  If  we  may  not  compel  the  premature 
adoption  by  society  of  ideal  institutions,  neither,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  we  perpetrate  that  other  absurdity  and  hold  society 
in  conditions  it  has  outgrown;  thereby  fostering  hate  and  antag- 
onism, in  the  midst  of  an  industrial  evolution  the  principle  of 
which  is  peaceful  co-operation  and  combined  effort.  Thus,  by 
these  simple  and  necessary  provisions,  the  corporation  would  have 
been  made  the  servant,  instead  of,  as  now,  the  master  of  indus- 
trial society;  and  this  without  in  the  least  interfering  with  its 
greatest  possible  extension,  and  widest  range  of  usefulness. 


36  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

And  what  government  thus  failed  to  do  in  the  first  instance, 
it  must  yet  do.  If  we  see  an  individual  pursuing  a  mistaken 
course,  we  advise  him  to  reform  his  conduct,  and  thus  avert  his 
ruin.  Even  so  of  human  institutions.  Only  by  radical  reform 
can  grave  social  and  industrial  diseases  be  eradicated;  and  any 
compromise  or  partial  measures  can  but  end  in  disappoint- 
ment. 

In  the  first  place,  public  utilities,  such  as  railways,  street  rail- 
ways, gas  and  electric  lighting,  and  the  like,  as  also,  banks,  trust 
companies,  insurance  companies,  and  like  institutions,  should 
forever  be  taken  from  under  corporate  control. 

The  mere  fact  that  they  are  public  services,  in  which  the 
whole  community  is  interested  renders  it  unsafe  to  exploit  them 
for  profit.  The  citizen  cannot  provide  himself  with  such  services; 
and  if  these  are  given  over  to  private  corporations  for  their  profit, 
must  either  go  without  the  services,  or  pay  whatever  they  see  fit 
to  extort.  But  he  cannot  ordinarily  go  without  the  services; 
and  hence  they  charge,  as  a  rule,  "all  the  traffic  will  bear;"  and 
the  public  must  satisfy  their  demands,  or  its  crops  must  go  un- 
marketed, its  supplies  be  withheld,  and  the  use  of  money  and  of 
all  other  public  services  be  denied.  To  give  this  power  to  private 
greed,  is  as  though  we  were  to  license  highwaymen  at  every  street 
corner,  or  cross-roads,  to  hold  up  the  helpless  passer-by.  Such 
surrender  of  the  interests  of  its  citizens,  is  not  the  part  of  an  en- 
lightened government  of  free  people;  but  represents,  instead, 
the  betrayal  of  the  interests  of  the  people,  by  their  public  servants, 
for  the  paltry  dollars  of  these  corporations.  It  enslaves  a  people, 
and  besieges  them,  and  cuts  off  their  means  of  life  and  supply, 
except  as  they  pay  tribute  to  the  corporations,  to  whom  they  and 
all  their  labor  and  means  of  living  are  sold. 

That  these  franchises  and  properties  should  be  reclaimed,  goes 
without  saying.  No  plea  of  "vested  rights"  can  be  heard  to  the 
contrary;  for  the  maxim  is  universal  that  "private  must  yield 
to  public  welfare;"  and  obedient  to  this  maxim,  the  citizen's 
property  was  condemned,  and  even  his  home  taken  from  him, 
in  the  building  of  these  highways.  Much  less,  then,  in  the  restor- 
ation to  the  people  of  these,  their  inalienable  rights,  involving 
their  liberty  and  even  their  lives  in  the  truest  sense,  can  any  such 
plea  avail  the  corporations,  whose  possession  has  never  been  any- 
thing but  wrongful,  and  who  have  already  so  largely  profited  by 
that  wrong. 

The  trust  itself  should,  moreover,  be  taken  possession  of  and 
operated  by  the  people. 

Had  the  corporation  been  made  in  the  beginning  co-operative 
and  public,  instead  of  an  instrument  of  private  greed,  then  in 
the  natural  evolution  of  industry  it  would  have  extended  itself 
as  now,  but  all  the  benefits  would  have  gone  to  the  people,  and 


CORPORATION    SHOULD    BE    SOCIAL,    COOPERATIVE   37 

the  corporation  would  have  been  their  servant  instead  of  their 
master.  But  since  this  wise  and  only  rational  course  was  not 
adopted;  and  since,  through  our  mistake,  and  the  fraud  prac- 
ticed upon  us,  the  corporations  have  seized  upon  all  the  products 
of  labor  and  supplies  of  life  of  a  whole  people,  with  the  power  to 
dictate  absolute  terms  both  to  the  world  of  labor  and  of  living, — 
then  there  remains  now  no  other  alternative  than  for  the  people 
themselves  to  take  possession  of  these  trusts,  even  as  they  must 
take  possession  of  their  public  service  corporations. 

Were  the  corporation  itself  innocent  of  any  taint  of  fraud,  its 
development  into  the  trust  would,  nevertheless,  make  this  a 
right,  and  necessary,  thing  to  do.  The  control  of  a  people's 
products  and  supplies,  like  their  liberties  or  their  lives,  cannot  be 
bartered  or  given  away;  and  were  they  voluntarily  to  make  such 
surrender,  they  must  yet  have  the  right  to  repudiate  the  folly 
upon  coming  to  their  senses.  The  very  nature  of  the  rights  parted 
with  raises  the  presumption,  not  to  be  rebutted,  that  they  were 
ignorant  of  the  nature  of  their  act. 

But  the  corporation  has  not  been  innocent  of  the  taint  of  fraud. 
On  the  contrary,  it  has  been,  as  we  have  seen,  the  creature  of  cor- 
ruption and  fraud  from  the  very  beginning.  The  lobbyists  of  these 
corporations  have  filled  every  legislative  body;  and  their  agents 
have  masqueraded  as  the  servants  of  the  people,  while  building 
up  the  power  and  wealth  of  the  corporations,  until  this  has  reached 
the  point  where  trusts  are  possible. 

The  trust  is,  moreover,  a  conspiracy  not  justified  by  our  cor- 
poration laws  themselves.  It  is  true  that  the  corporation,  by 
being  made  the  creature  solely  of  private  interest,  with  no  limit 
to  the  capital  or  business  plants  included,  nor  upon  the  profits 
it  may  extort,  has  permitted  of  trust  combination;  and  our  cor- 
porate laws  are  thus  a  party  to  the  wrong.  But  not  even  the  hire- 
lings and  creatures  of  the  corporations,  who  procured  the  passage 
of  these  laws,  could  have  had  in  contemplation  the  combining 
together  of  all  the  corporations  throughout  the  country,  in  order 
to  control  one  after  another  the  products  and  supplies  of  a  whole 
nation,  thereby  to  extort  from  the  people  all  their  earnings  and 
swell  the  colossal  fortunes  of  our  trust  billionaires.  The  corrupt 
procuring  of  the  laws  was  but  the  purchasing  of  the  weapon; 
trust  formation  is  the  red-handed  use  of  that  weapon,  which 
now  s'nocks  the  public  into  a  sense  of  its  danger.  To  say  that  the 
people  have  not  the  right  to  put  an  end  to  these  practices,  is  as 
though  we  were  to  deny  them  the  right  to  protect  themselves 
against  a  pirate  crew  or  robber  band.  They  must  have  this  ri^ht 
to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  if  our  Declaration 
of  Independence  is  aught  but  words,  or  our  Constitution  itself 
anything  but  an  idle  mockery. 

But  manifestly,  then,  the  only  feasible  course  is  for  the  people 


38  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

to  take  charge  of  the  trusts,  even  as  of  the  public  service  corpora- 
tions. 

It  were  certainly  both  idle  and  useless  to  talk  of  disintegrat- 
ing the  trusts  into  the  separate  corporations  from  which  they 
were  formed.  This  would  oe  but  to  commit  the  folly  of  a  return 
to  positions  outgrown.  Had  the  corporation  been  in  the  first 
instance  rightly  formed,  larger  and  ever  larger  combinations  would 
still  have  been  inevitable;  but  the  public  would  have  reaped  all 
the  benefit,  instead  of  these  benefits  going,  as  now,  to  the  corpora- 
tions. To,  then,  forfeit  all  the  results  of  our  industrial  evolution, 
simply  because  we  have  thus  far  most  foolishly  deprived  ourselves, 
by  unwise  laws,  of  just  participation  in  its  benefits,  would  neither 
remedy  the  evil  we  have  committed,  nor  furnish  any  solution  of 
the  industrial  question.  We  should  rather  seek  to  place  industrial 
society  now  in  the  position  it  would  have  been,  had  our  course 
been  well  considered  in  the  first  instance;  and  this  can  only  be 
accomplished  by  the  public  taking  charge  of  the  trust. 

It  would,  in  fact,  be  a  task  beyond  human  power  to  restore  all 
independent  partnerships  and  corporations,  absorbed  and  routed 
by  the  trust,  to  their  former  positions;  much  less  could  they  be 
placed  in  the  positions  they  would  now  occupy  had  not  the  trust 
driven  them  from  the  field.  And  certainly  no  restoration  would 
be  possible  to  ruined  competitors,  defrauded  investors,  or  to  the 
ranks  of  labor,  and  the  whole  body  of  industrial  society  both  as 
producer  and  consumers,  from  whose  earnings  and  savings  the 
trust  financiers  have  amassed  their  billions.  But  the  one  con- 
sideration must  still  stand  out  in  burning  characters;  and  this  is, 
that  the  position  and  power  of  these  brigands  of  the  industrial 
world  is  both  wrong  in  itself,  and  has  been  wrongfully  obtained; 
and  not  only  the  welfare,  but  the  very  existence,  of  industrial 
society  demands  this  surrender  of  their  power  to  the  people,  who 
should  themselves  own  and  operate  the  trusts  as  well  as  all  public 
utiHties. 

Only  thus,  in  fact,  can  anything  in  the  nature  of  restitution 
be  made;  and  this  is  quite  as  important  and  necessary  to  be 
effected,  as  the  remedy  of  future  ills. 

The  purchase  of  public  utilities  from  the  corporations,  is,  in- 
deed, now  generally  advocated;  and  we  presume  the  same  alterna- 
tive will  be  proposed  with  regard  to  the  trusts,  when  the  people 
shall  have  become  thoroughly  aroused  as  to  what  they  mean,  as 
also  to  the  futility,  as  well  as  inadequacy,  of  all  attempts  to  curb 
or  smash  them.  But  this  acknowledges  the  right  in  these  cor- 
porations to  insist  upon  such  terms  as  they  please,  or  even  abso- 
lutely to  refuse  to  sell  until  their  franchises  and  privileges  shall 
have  expired;  thus  postponing  indefinitely,  and  rendering  prac- 
tically null,  any  attempt  at  a  real  remedy.  The  proposition  is, 
moreover,  in  any  just  estimate,  deliciously  ludicrous.    The  sim- 


CORPORATION    SHOULD    BE    SOCIAL,    CO-OPERATIVE   39 

plicity  of  the  countryman  who  "locked  the  stable  after  the  horse 
was  stolen,"  was  sage  wisdom  by  comparison.  It  is  as  though 
that  countryman,  with  the  thief  openly  parading  his  stolen  horse 
in  his  plain  sight,  should  have  hypnotized  himself  into  the  belief 
that  the  possession  of  that  thiei  was  evidence  of  property,  and 
sacred;  and  while  still  in  that  hypnotic  state,  should  have  pro- 
posed to  mortgage  his  farm  and  future  labor,  in  order  to  purchase 
back  his  stolen  property. 

if,  through  the  misconduct  of  their  public  servants,  the  people 
have  been  defrauded  of  the  possession  of  their  public  highways,  as 
also  of  industry  itself,  then  their  right  to  repossess  themselves  of 
these  properties  and  franchises  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  repossess  himself  of  his  property,  whether  lost  or  stolen. 
The  deprivations  and  wrongs  of  the  past  can  never  be  remedied; 
and  all  the  wealth  that  has  thus  far  gone  to  supply  the  lavish  and 
sinful  waste  of  these  arch  plunderers  of  the  industrial  world,  may 
not  be  restored  to  the  people;  but  all  the  plundered  wealth  that 
yet  remains,  including  the  franchises  and  properties,  is  theirs  to 
recover  and  possess. 

To  attempt  such  purchase  would,  indeed,  entail  upon  indus- 
trial society  an  impossible  burden. 

it  is  stated*  that  the  income  of  John  D.  Rockefeller  is  $72,000,- 
000  per  year.  If  this  is  true,  then  the  wealth  of  that  individual 
alone,  judged  by  its  earning  power,  is  to-day  not  far  from  $2,- 
500,000,000;  and  before  any  reform  can  be  effected  will  undoubt- 
edly be  $3,000,000,000.  Now,  inasmuch  as  the  net  earnings  of 
the  whole  people  are  only  $3,000,000,000  per  annum,  it  would 
require  all  the  earnings  of  all  the  people  of  the  nation  for  a  whole 
year,  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  this  one  individual  alone,  in  the 
event  of  such  purchase.  But  he  is  only  one  of  thousands  of  the 
enormously  rich;  and  the  class,  of  which  he  is  representative, 
possess  practically  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  $106,000,000,000  given 
as  our  national  wealth.  Not  all  the  labor  of  all  the  people  would, 
then,  suffice  to  maintain  the  interest  charge  alone  upon  this  plun- 
der; and  as  well  might  a  slave,  all  whose  toil  belongs  to  an  abso- 
lute master,  hope  to  purchase  its  freedom,  as  industrial  society 
to  undertake  such  purchase,  and  then  hope  even  to  lighten  its 
debt  burden. 

Aside  from  the  contradiction  it  implies,  and  the  hardship  it 
must  entail,  the  purchase  by  society  of  these  possessions  would 
perpetuate  an  aristocracy  of  wealth,  having  no  occupation  but 
the  search  for  pleasure  and  power,  and  quite  as  formidable  then 
as  now.  It  would  take  all  the  profits  from  production  and  indus- 
try, leaving  the  whole  of  industrial  society  in  the  future,  as  at 
present,  but  "hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water"  for  these 
lords  of  the  industrial  world.     It  would  convert  this  into  an  im- 

*See  The  New  York  Commercial,  January  — ,  1905. 


40  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

mense  corruption  fund,  in  the  hands  of  an  idle  class  trained  to 
ambition  and  power.  Many  might  be  content  with  this  perpetual 
mortgage  upon  the  labor  of  the  whole  nation,  and  spend  their 
incomes  upon  pleasure;  but  who  can  doubt  that  the  great  lords 
of  finance  who  now  dominate  the  industrial  world,  would  still 
thirst  for  power;  and,  conversant  with  all  the  corrupt  methods  of 
our  politics,  would  use  the  same  criminal  methods  to  build  up  a 
newer  power,  as  those  employed  to  build  up  their  present  pos- 
sessions and  power? 

Besides,  such  half-way  action,  or  compromise,  would  be  as 
wrong  and  unjust  as  it  would  be  impolitic.  All  these  possessions 
have  been  created  alone  by  the  labor  of  industrial  society;  and 
to  it,  and  it  alone,  they  justly  belong. 

If,  therefore,  these  possessions  have  found  their  way  into  the 
hands  of  the  present  possessors  through  unjust  laws,  through 
bribery,  corruption,  fraud,  and  other  criminal  misconduct,  which 
the  people  could  not  foresee  or  prevent,  then  the  people  cannot  do 
less  than  demand  a  full  return  both  of  the  properties  and  all  the 
accumulated  wealth  therefrom.  Their  right  to  this  wealth  is 
exactly  commensurate  with  their  right  to  take  possession  of  the 
properties  themselves.  The  return  of  the  goods  of  which  they 
have  been  despoiled,  is  quite  as  important,  and  altogether  as  just, 
as  the  prevention  of  further  spoilation.  It  is  enough  that  they 
have  been  so  long  defrauded  of  their  just  possessions,  and  com- 
pelled to  toil  in  the  service,  and  at  the  dictation,  of  the  wrongful 
appropriators;  without  assuming  this  voluntary  and  dangerous 
additional  burden  of  perpetual  toil,  in  order  to  come  into  the  pos- 
session of  their  own  again,  or  rather  into  what  would  be  but  a 
hollow  mockery  of  that  possession.  This  wealth,  thus  plundered 
from  a  nation's  toil,  either  belongs  to  these  plunderers  or  to  the 
society  from  which  they  have  plundered  it;  and  to  one  or  the 
other  it  must  go  in  the  end.  Industrial  society  must  make  its 
choice  between  the  two  horns  of  the  dilemma;  it  must  be  the  judge 
of  its  own  rights,  as  also  the  enforcer  of  its  own  decrees;  and  from 
its  decision  there  is  no  appeal,  as  no  recourse  from  its  action. 

The  corporation,  then,  in  all  its  ramifications,  industrial,  finan- 
cial, and  public  service,  should  be  taken  from  under  the  control 
of  private  interests,  and  made  co-operative  in  the  workers,  by 
them  to  be  administered  for  the  common  good;  it  should  be,  in 
fact,  a  social  not  a  selfish  institution. 

This  simple  reform  of  the  corporation,  both  in  the  field  of 
public  service  and  of  industry,  will  free  all  our  public  services, 
and  industry  itself,  from  the  enormous  tax  now  levied  thereupon 
by  concentrated  wealth;  and  will  restore  to  the  body  of  society, 
in  the  only  practicable  manner,  all  the  wealth  of  which  it  has  been 
plundered.  It  will,  in  fact,  remedy  practically  all  the  ills  from 
which  industrial  society  now  suffers,  with  the  single  exception  of 


NATURE  AND  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REQUIRED  REMEDY     41 

the  land  question  alone.  All  the  vast  enterprises  built  up  by 
our  great  "Captains  of  industry,"  so  called,  through  the  plunder 
of  the  public,  are  in  the  form  of  corporations;  while  all  the  in- 
vestment of  that  plunder,  but  to  perpetuate  the  power  of  concen- 
trated wealth,  remains  in  the  corporations,  with  the  almost  single 
exception  of  investments  in  lana. 

Restore,  then,  the  corporation  to  the  people,  stripped  of  this 
plunder,  and  the  reign  of  concentrated  wealth  is  at  an  end;  Wall 
btreet,  with  other  like  gambling  institutions,  will  be  a  thing  of 
the  past;  and  the  defrauding  of  investors,  by  our  high-fmanciers, 
will  be  no  longer  possible.  And  even  as  to  the  land  question,  the 
right  application  of  the  corporate  principle  and  function  to  mines 
and  mineral  resources,  as  also  to  landed  property  in  crowded 
centers  required  for  joint  use  and  occupancy,  would  as  effectually 
solve  that  as  every  other  problem  of  our  industrial  system. 

The  further  plunder  of  industrial  society  will  thus  be  pre- 
vented; and  the  plunder  already  taken  from  it  will  be  restored. 
Labor  will  become  a  full  partner  in  all  the  benefits  and  savings 
of  the  corporation.  The  farmer  or  other  producer  will  get  the 
full  value  of  his  products,  when  these  are  freed  from  the  burden 
©f  the  colossal  fortunes  now  levied  by  high-financiers  through 
transportation,  trust  control,  and  other  forms  of  extortion.  The 
cost  of  all  public  service,  as  also  of  all  supplies,  will  at  the  same 
time  be  proportionately  reduced  to  the  consumer;  and  living  will 
share  in  the  general  benefit.  In  short,  all  the  vast  created  wealth 
of  the  world  of  industry,  will  remain  in  the  body  of  society  by 
which  it  is  created, — instead  of,  as  now,  but  goin^  to  swell  the 
enormous  fortunes  of  our  high-financiers, — and  will  surely  and 
equally  inure  to  every  member  in  better  wages  and  larger  profits, 
in  cheaper  prices,  and  in  freedom  from  debt,  as  also  from  the 
1  uin  and  speculative  losses  due  to  present  conditions. 

NATURE  AND  JUSTICE  OF   THE   REQUIRED   REMEDY 

But  we  shall  hear  of  "confiscation  of  property;"  and  Mr. 
Carnegie  gravely  assures  us*  that,  "upon  the  sacredness  of  'prop- 
erty' civilization  itself  depends;  the  right  of  the  laborer  to  his 
hundred  dollars  in  the  savings  bank,  and  equally  the  legal  right 
of  the  millionaire  to  his  millions."  We  are  informed  that  all  who 
attack  concentrated  wealth  are  communists  or  anarchists,  and 
are  enemies  not  only  of  society  and  civilization,  but  equally  so  of 
the  humble  wage  earner  himself;  that  once  the  foundations  of 
"property"  are  undermined,  no  man's  possessions,  however  hum- 
ble, will  be  secure.  This  being  the  case,  every  good  citizen  must, 
of  course,  rush  to  the  defence  of  these  millions;  and  repel  every 
question  of  them,  as  an  assault  upon  the  wages  of  his  own 
humble  toil. 

*  "  Gospel  of  Wealth,"  Andrew  Carnegie.     Page  5 


42  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

The  term  "property"  does  not j*;  however,  signify  alone  the 
mere  fact  of  possession,  but  rightful  possession  as  well.  The  same 
law  which  assures  the  honest  toiler  the  peaceful  possession  of  his 
wage,  both  punishes  the  thief  and  recovers  the  stolen  goods. 

Plunder  is  not  property.  If  it  were  so,  the  taking  of  the  coun- 
terfeiter's coin,  or  the  pirate's  ship,  could  also  be  called  a  confisca- 
tion of  "property!"  Yet  we  calmly  proceed  to  this  work  of  "con- 
fiscation;" and  even  go  so  far  as  to  "confiscate"  the  liberty  of 
each,  until  such  time  as  he  shall  learn  the  real  meaning  of  both 
"liberty"  and  "property."  And  these  vast  exploited  fortunes, 
wrung  from  the  toil  of  a  whole  nation,  partake  very  largely  of 
the  character  both  of  that  coin  and  that  ship.  For  these  are 
"made  dollars"  standing  for  no  just  labor  or  return,  and  traded 
to  the  people  ignorant  of  the  fraud  and  crime;  and  now,  in  the 
trust  and  other  combinations,  they  are  used  in  piracy  pure 
and  simple,  on  the  high  seas  of  commerce,  to  relieve  all  the 
people  of  their  substance, — an  act  as  much  more  heinous  than 
common  piracy  as  the  public  is  more  helpless  against  the 
depredation. 

The  charge,  too,  of  "Socialism"  is  frequently  made  against 
any  proposal  for  the  people  to  take  charge  of  their  public  utilities 
and  other  equally  vital  concerns.  Socialism,  we  are  told,  is  ideal 
but  not  practical;  man's  nature  is  essentially  selfish,  and  he  must 
have  selfish  institutions;  only  by  means  of  competition,  and  a 
"  struggle  for  existence  "  is  his  development  obtained;  and  any 
other  state  could  but  result  in  his  stagnation ;  would,  in  fact,  be 
destructive  of  all  progress.  As  a  result  of  these  and  other  like 
attractive  arguments.  Socialism  has  come  to  be  looked  upon  as 
a  name  of  dread. 

Hence  it  was,  that  when  the  invention  of  machinery  made  it 
necessary  to  provide  some  means  by  which  men  might  work  to- 
gether, instead  of  separately,  we  could  think  of  no  alternative  but 
to  create  the  modern  corporation,  not  as  a  means  of  real  co-opera- 
tion, but  instead  as  a  warring  and  selfish  factor  in  our  industrial 
and  social  system,  to  the  inevitable  destruction  of  individual  effort 
in  the  whole  field  of  industry.  This  was  our  only  escape  from  that 
other  much  dreaded  alternative, — the  peaceable  co-operation  of 
men  for  their  common  benefit.  And  if,  by  means  of  these  cor- 
porations both  public  and  private,  practically  all  the  wealth  of 
the  world — the  savings  of  the  past,  and  the  earnings  of  the  pres- 
ent— has  found  its  way  in  the  space  of  two  generations  into  the 
possession  of  their  owners;  if  we  have  to-day  the  greatest  and 
most  numerous  fortunes  the  world  has  ever  seen,  in  the  midst  of 
general  poverty;  if  we  have  our  billionaires,  and  our  million  of 
unemployed; — we  accepted  these  conditions  gladly,  in  our  blind 
infatuation  for  the  god  of  selfishness  we  worshipped.  Thus, 
and  governed  by  such  considerations  as  these,  have  we  built  up 


NATURE  AND  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REQUIRED  REMEDY     43 

the  power  of  the  corporation  and  of  concentrated  wealth;  until 
competition  is  more  surely  at  an  end  than  were  Socialism  itself 
the  order  of  the  day. 

But  if  this  be  the  case,  then  must  the  cry  even  of  "Socialism" 
fall  upon  deaf  ears.  We  are,  in  fact,  no  longer  asked  to  decide 
between  competition  on  the  one  hand,  and  co-operation  on  the 
other;  but  instead,  between  co-operation  for  the  benefit  of  the 
many,  or  co-operation  for  the  benefit  of  the  few. 

In  the  old  days,  when  competition  still  obtained,  men  might 
have  preferred  to  fight  each  other  for  the  results  of  their  joint 
labor,  rather  than  peaceably  to  divide  this  among  themselves. 
Their  prejudices,  their  brute  instincts,  as  also  their  hope  of  per- 
sonal advantage,  would  have  been  appealed  to;  and  these  argu- 
ments would  have  had  some  force.  But  when  it  comes  to  a  choice 
between  giving  all  the  fruits  of  their  toil  to  the  high-financiers 
of  the  day,  and  toiling  for  these  in  the  character  of  servants;  or, 
on  the  other  hand,  dividing  with  each  other  these  fruits,  as  free 
and  equal  partners  in  all  the  vast  enterprises  of  the  age,  we  ap- 
prehend that  none  save  the  few  who  profit  by  the  present  situa- 
tion can  long  hesitate.  If  the  turning  over  by  our  institutions 
of  all  the  fruits  of  our  toil  to  savage  and  insatiate  greed,  be  "In- 
dividualism," the  citizen  may  come  in  the  end  to  reconcile  him- 
self to  Socialism  as  a  desiraole  alternative.  And  if  the  corrup- 
tion and  plunder,  the  colossal  fortunes  and  dire  want,  we  every- 
where behold  around  us,  stand  for  "American,"  the  citizen  may 
even  consent  to  be  Un-American. 

If,  for  example,  a  dozen  men  were  cast  by  shipwreck  upon  a 
solitary  island;  and  the  choice  was  presented  to  them  in  cold 
blood,  either  to  share  that  island  and  its  products  in  peace  among 
themselves  as  equal  partners,  or  to  turn  it  over  to  one  or  two 
among  them  as  their  absolute  private  property,  all  the  others 
to  toil  in  their  service  for  a  grudging  existence,  or  even  this  denied 
them,  to  beg  or  starve  as  best  they  might ; — we  suspect  that  neither 
the  name  nor  the  inducements  of  "Individualism"  could  win  the 
consent  of  the  remaining  number  to  this  latter  course,  so  long  as 
they  remained  in  possession  of  their  senses.  They  would  answer, 
that  any  such  arrangement  must  deprive  every  one  of  all  true  in- 
centive to  exertion;  that  those  given  this  possession  and  mastery 
could  only  be  tempted  either  to  luxury  on  the  one  hand  or  rapa- 
city on  the  other;  while  those  who  were  thus  robbed  of  their  pos- 
sessions, and  the  fruits  of  their  toil,  must  lack  both  the  hope  and 
courage  essential  whether  to  exertion  or  progress. 

And  even  so  must  industrial  society  to-day  turn  from  such 
doctrine  and  practice,  if  it  would  come  into  possession  of  its  own 
again,  and  free  itself  from  the  worse  than  Egyptian  bondage  in 
which  its  labor  and  living  are  now  held.  The  fact  is,  that  he  who 
is  not  at  heart  a  Socialist,  in  this  age,  is  but  a  political  Rip  Van 


44  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

Winkle,  asleep  to  the  world's  progress,  clad  in  the  tattered  rem- 
nants of  an  Old  political  philosophy,  and  peering  forth  in  stupid 
amazement  upon  a  changing  order  he  either  cannot  or  will  not 
comprehend.  Socialism  means  but  the  socialization  of  industry; 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  this  socialization  has  already  taken  place. 
It  but  remains,  then,  for  us  intelligently  and  sensibly  to  recog- 
nize this  fact,  and  conform  thereto;  to  the  end  that  industrial 
society  be  no  longer  crippled  by  institutions  unfitted  to  it;  and 
in  order  that  social  and  mdustrial  health  may  at  last  obtain. 

The  difficulty  seems  to  be  that  our  ideas  of  Socialism,  like 
those  of  Don  Quixote  regarding  chivalry,  have  been  obtained 
from  old  writers,  or  from  the  reading  of  romances;  and  like  him 
we  then  go  forth  to  wage  valiant  battle  with  the  windmills  of  our 
own  creation.  Thus  it  is  that  socialism  has  become  identified  in 
the  popular  mind  with  a  sort  of  universal  "trading  stamp"  sys- 
tem, whereby  each  individual  is  to  have  a  certain  credit  to  draw 
upon  the  public  fund,  without  regard  to  what  he  may  have  earned 
or  any  question  of  desert. 

Yet  with  this  Utopian  dream  the  Socialism  of  to-day  has 
little  in  common,  except  that  it  is  based  upon  the  social  rather 
than  the  selfish  principle.  The  platform  of  socialism  but  de- 
clares for  the  collective  ownership  of  "the  common  means  of 
production  and  exchange."  And  when  we  shall  decide,  as  de- 
cide we  must,  that  the  corporation,  industrial,  financial,  and 
public  service,  shall  belong  to  the  workers,  and  be  controlled  col- 
lectively by  them,  as  also  apply  the  like  corporate  principle  and 
function  to  mines,  and  to  such  lands  in  our  crowded  centers  as 
are  required  for  joint  use  and  occupancy,  we  shall  not  only  remedy 
the  iniquities  of  our  present  industrial  system,  but  also  inaugurate, 
in  the  most  practicable  manner,  the  one  solution  of  our  social  and 
industrial  problem — practical,  scientific  socialism.  And  this  we 
will  eventually  be  driven  to  do  by  the  logic  of  events,  either  con- 
sistently and  as  a  whole,  or  blunderingly  and  piecemeal,  as  now 
demanded  in  the  current  agitation  for  public  ownership  and  other 
like  political  makeshifts  of  the  hour. 

Under  the  corporation,  indeed,  competition  becomes  a  farce, 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  "Struggle  for  existence  and  survival  of 
the  fittest"  arrant  nonsense. 

Even  if  the  aim  of  our  institutions  be  the  development  of  the 
brute  faculties  alone,  this  was  forever  defeated  by  the  creation 
of  the  corporation  to  war  upon  individual  effort,  which  is  doomed 
in  every  field,  unable  to  cope  with  its  unequal  and  monstrous 
power.  Every  vestige  of  equality  and  freedom  which  obtains 
with  the  brute  or  savage  in  this  "struggle"  is  thus  destroyed,  and 
man  is  made  the  victim  of  his  own  institutions.  To  make  that 
doctrine  applicable  at  all,  we  would  have  to  disintegrate  society, 
abolish  government,  and  return  to  the  state  of  the  brute  or  sav- 


NATURE  AND  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REQUIRED  REMEDY     45 

age,  without  institutions,  without  machinery,  or  factories,  or  rail- 
ways, or  any  but  the  simplest  tools,  each  individual  dependent 
upon  his  own  efforts  alone,  without  help  or  co-operation  from  his 
fellows.  Every  law  we  enact,  every  institution  we  adopt,  every 
invention,  ana  all  progress — in  short,  all  that  makes  industrial 
society  civilized  or  industrial — but  increases  the  hardships,  and 
heightens  the  absurdity,  of  applying  the  selfish  principle  to  gov- 
ern human  relations.  And  sooner  or  later,  whether  at  the  elev- 
enth hour,  or  at  the  twelfth  when  it  will  have  become  too  late, 
we  shall  have  to  recognize  the  fact  that  not  the  selfish  principle, 
but  its  opposite,  is  the  true  law  of  industrial  society,  even  though 
it  tear  every  old  and  darling  superstition  from  its  place  and  moor- 
ings in  our  affections. 

If  we  leave  the  realm  of  speculation  and  consult  experience 
alone,  it  would,  indeed,  be  difficult  to  explain  how  the  conditions 
we  behold  around  us  to-day  as  the  result  of  our  social  doctrines 
and  practices,  are  or  can  be  productive  of  any  real  development. 

Certainly  this  is  not  to  be  hoped  for  from  the  idlers  of  society, 
exempted  by  their  vast  possessions  from  any  useful  exertion  what- 
soever. Their  god  is  pleasure  alone;  how  to  amuse  themselves 
for  the  hour  is  the  one  aim  of  their  existence;  and  to  achieve  this 
end  they  hesitate  at  no  expense,  nor  set  the  limit  to  any  folly. 
Nor  yet  can  we  expect  this  from  the  mere  beasts  of  burden  of  our 
industrial  system,  whose  every  energy  is  employed  in  the  desper- 
ate effort  but  to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door.  From  the  lives  of 
idleness  and  debauchery  of  the  one  class,  or  of  grinding  toil  and 
squalid  want  of  the  other,  humanity  can  have  nothing  to  hope. 
There  must  be  leisure  and  hope  for  man;  there  must  be  incentive 
to  exertion,  as  well  as  opportunity  for  development,  if  he  would 
achieve  the  great  and  useful  ends  of  his  existence.  And  here, 
instead  of  patriotism  and  love  of  kind,  we  behold  selfishness,  and 
hatred,  and  resentment,  and  strife,  and  corruption,  and  fraud, 
and  all  that  goes  to  make  life,  both  individual  and  national,  un- 
desirable and  fraught  with  danger. 

Indeed,  it  could  hardly  be  otherwise.  That  father  who  should 
teach  his  children  that  their  proper  occupation  in  life  is  to  tear 
at  each  other's  throats,  and  endeavor  by  every  means  in  their 
power  to  destroy  each  other,  must  expect  to  find  his  home  dis- 
cordant and  hateful — a  society  of  criminals.  And  to  preach  the 
like  social  doctrine,  is  but  to  make  of  men  aggregated  together  in 
society  a  body  of  human  cannibals.  The  stronger  and  more  dar- 
ing will,  of  course,  oppress  and  destroy  the  weaker  and  less  sav- 
age. Nor  is  the  fact  greatly  altered  when  we  make  the  strife 
industrial  instead  of  physical.  If  hatred  and  strife  still  rule, 
they  will  bring  out  the  results  of  hatred  and  strife;  and  many 
will  be  crowded  away  from  the  means  of  life,  to  satisfy  the  insa- 
tiate greed  of  the  more  grasping  and  unscrupulous.     Corruption 


46  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

and  fraud,  instead  of  mere  brute  force,  will  enter;  and  human  in- 
stitutions will  be  employed  to  oppress  and  render  helpless  the 
body  of  the  people. 

And  thus  will  be  brought  about,  and  thus  has  been  brought 
about,  industrial  warfare  and  strife  carried  to  the  very  point  of 
extermination,  that  would  shame  the  ferocious  instincts  of  can- 
nibal tribes.  The  savage  instincts  of  these  are  confined  to  the 
destruction  of  those  outside  of  their  own  tribe;  while  with  us  it 
has  victimized  the  great  mass  of  our  own  people  engaged  in  hon- 
est toil,  but  to  swell  the  colossal  possessions  of  the  insatiate  few 
through  a  seizure  upon  all  the  supplies  of  life,  as  hostile  armies 
are  alone  supposed  to  war  against  an  enemy  nation.  And  this 
in  a  peaceful  society  preaching  the  doctrine  of  the  Christ !  Verily 
of  human  institutions,  as  of  men,  must  we  exclaim  with  him, — 
"  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them!" 

Hence  it  is  that  within  the  space  of  half  a  century  we  have 
built  up  an  aristocracy  of  wealth,  the  like  of  wh  ch  required  Rome 
or  Russia  five  hundred  years  to  develop.  We  can  boast  a  single 
citizen  whose  income  perhaps  exceeds  the  combined  incomes  of 
all  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  or  of  Asia;  while  we  have  scores, 
and  even  hundreds  of  others  whose  single  incomes  probably  ex- 
ceed those  of  any  of  the  monarchs  of  the  Old  World. 

This  doctrine  has,  besides,  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  and 
most  rapid  wealth  production  the  world  has  ever  witnessed,  left 
practically  the  whole  of  society,  by  whose  labor  alone  all  this 
wealth  has  been  created,  dependent  upon  their  daily  earnings  for 
life  itself;  or,  the  right  to  labor  denied  them,  has  driven  them 
forth  in  ever  increasing  numbers  to  beg  or  starve.  It  has  in  this 
new  civilization  changed,  in  the  short  space  of  a  half  century,  a 
band  of  free  and  liberty-loving  yeomen,  who  left  their  homes  in 
the  Old  World  in  search  of  religious  liberty,  into  a  nation  whose 
every  nobler  aspiration  is  buried  in  the  pursuit  and  worship  of 
wealth  alone.  It  has  created  a  luxuriously  idle  class,  with  no  ob- 
ject or  pursuit  in  life  but  pleasure;  and  has  corrupted  our  politics 
which  brought  forth  a  Washington,  a  Jefferson,  and  a  Lincoln,  until 
they  are  on  a  par  with  the  politics  of  Greece  in  the  time  of  Philip, 
or  Rome  in  the  time  of  the  Caesars.  It  has  created  a  v^ar  of  classes, 
in  which  the  smouldering  wrath  and  resentment  of  men  at  the 
injustice  and  oppression  from  which  they  suffer,  is  ready  at  all 
times  to  break  forth  in  riot  and  bloodshed.  We  have  sown  the 
dragon's  teeth  of  hatred,  and  are  reaping  Jehovah's  curse  as  pro- 
nounced by  the  prophet  against  a  degenerate  people:  "And  I 
will  set  the  Egyptians  against  the  Egyptians;  and  they  shall  fight 
every  man  against  his  brother,  and  every  man  against  his  neigh- 
bor;" to  which  he  significantly  adds: — '  The  princes  of  Zoan  are 
fools;  the  counsel  of  the  wise  counsellors  of  Pharoah  is  become 
brutish." 


\NATURE  AND  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REQUIRED  REMEDY     47 

Yet  from  all  this  costly  and  bitter  experience,  we  are  slowly 
coming  to  learn  that  not  in  brute  warfare,  but  in  his  departure 
from  this,  man's  true  welfare  is  to  be  found,  and  his  civilization 
begins.  Each  step  of  his  progress  has  been  away  from  brute 
instincts,  toward  the  humane  and  moral  in  his  character.  In 
the  family,  the  most  primitive  human  relation,  we  fmd  the  paci- 
fic principle;  and  as  men  aggregated  into  tribes  and  nations  this 
same  principle  was  carried  into  these  larger  relations.  The  great- 
ness, whether  of  individuals  or  of  nations,  has,  indeed,  consisted 
alone  in  the  devotion  to  high  ideals,  to  country  and  to  kind; 
while  on  the  other  hand,  just  in  proportion  as  men  and  nations 
have  lapsed  back  into  the  selfish  and  savage  instincts,  they  have 
become  weak  and  degenerate.  Much  more,  then,  when  society 
became  industrial,  and  "  Beat  its  swords  into  ploughshares,  and 
its  spears  into  pruninghooks,"  did  there  go  forth  the  fiat  of  "  Peace 
on  earth  and  good  will  to  men;"  and  it  but  remained  for  us  to 
shape  our  institutions  upon  this  principle,  to  have  reaped  the  full 
benefits  of  our  progress,  and  achieved  the  complete  and  final 
emancipation  of  man. 

And  it  but  remains  for  us  now  to  use  the  means  which  the 
corporation  has  itself  provided,  in  order  to  yet  reap  the  fruits  of 
that  progress  and  bring  about  that  emancipation.  It  is  only  the 
exploitation  of  the  corporation  in  the  interest  of  selfish  greed  of 
which  we  have,  in  fact,  any  cause  for  complaint.  In  itself  it  is 
a  necessary  and  inevitable  institution.  Since  combination  was 
the  necessary  outgrowth  of  industrial  conditions,  some  means  of 
combination  must  be  provided;  and  this  the  corporation  alone 
could  adequately  and  efficiently  secure.  On  several  grounds, 
indeed,  we  have  no  cause  for  other  than  gratulation  because  of 
its  very  exploitation.  The  mad  selfishness  to  which  it  was  due, 
as  well  as  to  which  it  has  again  so  largely  contributed,  has  per- 
haps brought  about  the  organization  of  industry  sooner  than 
could  have  been  accomplished  by  any  other  means.  It  has,  too, 
in  the  very  excesses  to  which  it  has  led,  exposed  the  full  naked- 
ness of  the  selfish  principle  upon  which  it  was  based.  "Whom 
the  Gods  would  destroy  they  first  make  mad,"  runs  the  adage; 
and  of  greed  and  rapacity  in  all  its  aspects  may  well  be  exclaimed 
in  the  words  that  hurried  Duncan's  murderer  to  his  doom, — 

"  If  it  were  done  when  'tis  done 
Then  'twere  well  it  were  done  quickly." 

The  present  corporate  regime  is,  in  fact,  but  the  redudio  ad  ah- 
surdam  of  capitalism ;  and  even  as  it  has  on  the  one  hand  accom- 
plished the  organization  which  gives  promise  of  better  things,  so 
also,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it  calculated  to  shock  the  public  mind 
into  a  sense  of  the  necessity  for  a  change.  It  requires,  indeed,  no 
acceptance  of  the  theory  of  "surplus  value,"  or  other  doctrine 


48  THE    CONCENTRATION    OF    WEALTH 

of  Socialism,  to  bring  men  to  resent,  with  all  the  power  that  in 
them  hes,  a  condition  in  which  not  one,  but  a  thousand,  great 
combinations  have  each  of  them  the  power  to  dictate  the  terms 
of  labor,  and  tax  the  living  of  every  citizen  in  the  land,  by  means 
of  their  absolute  control  of  industry,  of  all  supplies,  and  of  all 
public  services  of  every  nature  and  description — a  tax  a  thousand 
times  more  dangerous,  and  ten  thousand  times  more  extortionate, 
than  the  few  pence  per  pound  upon  tea  or  the  trifling  stamp  duty 
which  fanned  into  a  flame  the  '  spirit  of  '76." 

Or,  should  we  yet  remain  insensate,  this  power  and  this  greed 
so  crystalized,  and  so  fed,  is  inexorable  as  fate,  as  insatiable  as  the 
mouth  of  hell.  The  struggle  is  not  becoming,  it  already  is,  one  to 
the  very  death.  As  witness  our  million  of  unemployed;  as  witness 
the  starving  thousands  in  our  cities;  as  witness  the  grinding 
drudgery  of  practically  the  whole  body  of  industrial  society,  but 
to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door;  as  witness  the  awful  fear  of  want 
stalking  relentless  as  the  gaunt  figure  of  Time  by  the  side  of  every 
toiler;  as  witness,  too,  our  vast  creation  of  wealth;  our  boasted 
conquest  of  the  world's  markets;  our  relentless  billions  amassed 
but  to  swell  the  pride  and  power  of  the  insatiate  few,  who  little 
reck  of  the  privation  and  misery  they  cause;  as  witness,  again,  the 
sullen  hate,  the  fierce  struggle,  and  the  deadly  conflict,  that  ever 
and  again  ensue. 

In  the  presence  of  such  spectres  as  these,  men  will  be  driven 
by  the  logic  of  events,  by  the  stern  necessity  of  the  situation, 
to  demand  nothing  less  than  their  entire  freedom.  From  the 
empty  jargon  of  promises  to  control,  or  curb,  or  smash  these  cor- 
porations they  will  turn  in  disgust,  as  but  the  inane  mouthings 
of  the  minions  of  capitalism.  From  the  pitiful  makeshift  of  pub- 
lic ownership  upon  the  basis  of  purchase,  or  any  other  alleged 
remedy  which  leaves  these  arch  plunderers  in  control  of  their 
ill  gotten  gains,  and  with  this  of  their  criminal  power  as  well, 
they  will  turn  to  demand  at  last,  as  demand  they  must,  not  only 
the  control  by  the  workers  of  all  these  corporations,  but  also  to 
reclaim  all  the  plundered  fruits  of  their  toil:  They  will  demand 
that  capitalism  itself  shall  cease.  They  will  lay  aside  their  pre- 
judices, and  forget  their  fears.  They  will  cease  to  quibble  about 
names.  They  will  cease,  too,  question  as  to  what  use  they  will 
make  of  their  freedom,  or  whether  after  all  they  are  fit  to  be  free. 
Even  as  their  ancestors  who  fought  on  the  memorable  fields  of 
"  '76,"  they  will  be  driven  to  relegate  these  considerations  to  their 
proper  after  time  and  place;  and  bend  all  their  energies  to  the 
one  paramount  task  of  winning  back,  from  those  who  have  usurped 
and  exploited  it,  their  industrial  freedom;  trusting  to  their  own 
intelligence  to  solve  every  after  question. 


COMMENTS    UPON 


a 


THE  COMING  REVOLUTION 

BY    HENRY    LAXJRElSrS    CALL 


>f 


It  is  an  exceedingly  creditable  effort. 
— American  Newsman,  N.  Y.  City. 

It  is  the  production  of  a  broad  scholar, 
not  a  social  crank. — Christian  Advocate 
{^N^e^v  York.) 

"  The  Coming  Revolution  "  is  an  able 
work,  and  makes  a  plea  for  the  cause  of 
labor. —  Hartford  {Conn.)  Times. 

This  is  an  economic  study  that  holds 
the  reader  in  a  grip  of  fascination  from  the 
first  page  to  the  last. — Los  Angeles  Times. 

It  is  a  blast  against  the  present  con- 
dition of  things  in  the  social,  financial, 
and  political  world. —  Transcript  Monthly 
{Portland,  Me.) 

That  the  author  has  made  a  deep 
study  of  the  existing  state  of  affairs  in 
this  country  is  evident. — Florida  Times- 
Union,  Jacksonville,  Fla. 

In  a  time  prolific  of  superfluous  pub- 
lications on  the  industrial  question,  Mr. 
Call  has  written  a  book  that  demands 
serious  attention.  —  Conservator  {Phila., 
Pa.) 

Henry  Laurens  Call  discusses  lumin- 
ously in  •'  The  Coming  Revolution"  the 
economic  problems  which  are  to-day  dis- 
tressing all  earnest  thinkers. — Philadelphia 
Press. 

"The  Coming  Revolution"  solves  the 
last  great  problem  of  civilization,  human 
equality.  I  wish  every  working  man  and 
woman  in  America  would  read  it. — 
Hon.  J.  B.  Sovereign,  K.  of  L. 

Mr.  Call  is  a  clear,  logical  and  com- 
prehensive writer.  He  has  given  us  a 
useful  and  telling  picture  of  the  leading 
features  of  the  coming  industrial  revolu- 
ution. —  San  Francisco  Call. 

I  am  very  sure  that  no  student  of  poli- 
tical science  will  regret  reading  the  book. 
It  is  the  most  suggestive  and  philo- 
sophical treatise  that  has  come  to  my 
attention.— U.  S.  Senator  B.  R.  Till- 
man. 

The  author  explains  with  admirable 
clearness  what  others  have  talked  about 
in  a  way  to  leave  the  reader  doubly  con- 


fused after  wading  through  endles3  words. 
— Bttrlington  Hawkeye. 

A  vigorous  presentation  of  the  changes 
society  is  passing  through  in  industrial 
and  economic  ways,  as  if  in  preparation 
for  the  new  century  that  will  soon  be  upon 
the  world. — Brooklyn  Eagle. 

This  volume  is  a  comprehensive  and 
well-written  survey  of  existing  social  con- 
ditions with  their  scientific  remedy. —  The 
Voice,  New  York. 

The  book  is  strong,  clear,  and  con- 
vincing. This  work  ought  to  become  the 
hand-book  of  the  industrial  millions  in 
their  struggle  for  their  fundamental  rights 
based  on  justice. —  The  Aretta. 

The  thought  of  the  book  is  powerful 
and  developed  with  a  master's  hand. 
Every  chapter  intensifies  the  preceding 
ones.  The  last  chapter  might  well  be 
circulated  by  millions  as  a  tract. — Ottawa 
Journal. 

In  every  chapter  Mr.  Call  betrays  the 
scholar  and  philosopher,  as  well  as  the 
profound  student  of  sociological  and 
economic  questions. — Gov.   L.   D.  Lew- 

ELLING. 

Competent  critics  who  have  examined 
the  book  all  agree  that  it  is  the  most 
comprehensive,  logical,  clear,  and  schol- 
arly presentation  of  the  "  new  thought " 
that  has  yet  appeared.— /'///j3«r^  (Pa  ) 
Press. 

We  are  glad  to  see  such  a  book  as 
this.  Mr.  Call  has  evidently  been  a  care- 
ful observer  of  events,  and  he  has  kept 
his  eyes  open  to  good  purpose.  The 
book  is  strong,  argumentative,  denuncia. 
tory,  and  yet  hopeful. — iVew  Yotk  Herald^ 

•'The  Coming  Revolution"  is  a  scien- 
tific, cold-blooded,  mathematical  analysis 
of  modem  industrial  society,  in  which  the 
tangled  web  of  economic  falsities,  incon- 
sistencies, and  anomalies  is  shown  with 
the  clearness  of  demonstration  of  a  pro- 
fessor of  anatomy. — N'ew  York  World. 


Note —  The  above  work  is  und^'oOing  careful  revision.    Orders  received  now 
will  be  filled  as  soon  as  the  '.ook  is  issued  from  the  press.— H.  L.  C. 

Price:    Clotb,  $1.00.    Postpaid. 


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